Until now.
I've been working on a wedding quilt for my sister and it is a beast of a thing in terms of size and weight and I was struggling a bit with the quilting. Then I saw that Craftsy had a big sale on this past weekend so I picked up two of Angela Walters classes: Dot to Dot quilting and How Do I Quilt This?
I started with the Dot to Dot class because it was pretty short and I realized I don't want to be doing too much marking on this quilt.
Today I finished the stitch in the ditch on the quilt and started with the free motion designs. I followed some of Angela's ideas and incorporated a few of my own.
I decided on a simple design and made myself a template to help with the dot placement. I do like things even and well spaced.
My squares are about 4 1/2" wide so I started with a square that big and I marked off the diagonal lines:
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| sorry for the bad lighting - I had the drapes pulled to try to keep it cool in the house - we're in a bit of a heat wave right now |
Then I cut it out and notched the ends and ticky marks. The ends I notched out to help with placement and centering. It worked great.
This is the first square I marked. See the 8 little blue dots? My other "dots" for quilting are the corners and the centre - I didn't mark those.
Then I did my first shape. It looks pretty good to me. I used a water soluble marking pen so a quick spritz with water and I was moving on.
On my next one I realized it was hard to hit the "dots" that weren't marked because they were a little hard to see (since they didn't really exist). So I added a few more marks - actual dots in all the places I need. I'm so happy with the results and I'm sewing right along.
Now, if my cat would only stay off the quilt while I'm quilting, I wouldn't have to drag her weight around with the quilt.
