Quilting Update

I've been working away at quilting my Under the Stars quilt (sort of). It's not going quite as fast as I'd like - I think because it's been a bit tricky to quilt with the walking foot because it is so thick that it doesn't feed quite right.

The weather is warming up so I want to get it finished - I likely won't use it until next winter. And I refuse to start my next quilt, which I really want to get going on , before this one is finished.

So far, there is a grid quilted in all the squares and the stars are outlined. I free-motioned around the applique snowmen and did a loop-de-loop in the sky. In the green I want to do snowflakes (in grey) with swirly connectors between them - not too heavy quilting, but enough that it holds together nicely.

The light is really bad - but I'm not complaining, because it's pouring in through my sliding glass doors into the kitchen.

Getting Some Quilting Finished

This quilt has been sitting, folded up, for two years, waiting to be quilted. I just couldn't find my mo-jo to do it. I'm on it now. It's for my littlest niece who is now 6 - it was intended for her 2nd birthday - oh well. Better late than never. She wanted animals on her quilt, so that's what she got.

I started quilting with some purple/green variegated thread that I bought at one time for this project:

I don't like it. It's too dark. Thankfully, I'd only quilted 2 blocks when I decided it was too dark so I spent an afternoon on the couch, watching a movie, and unpicking the quilting.

I then switched to a light purple which I like much better:

It's subtle and I feel like it complements the quilt, rather than taking it over. And my wobbles don't show as much.

I've been using a combination of quilting stencils and free hand free-motion to quilt this. I tried a design I saw online - I'm pretty sure it was one of Angela Walter's Craftsy classes.

 It's a paisley-like filler and it's in the 3 blocks above. It's hard to see so I got an up close shot - it looks yellow here, but it's not.

From the back:

It's a little easier to see here. I really like how it turned out. It was simple to do and filled the space nicely. I didn't wobble too much, even when my cat tried to jump on top and didn't quite make it.

I hit a bit of a snag in a block that has pinwheels. I don't remember what I did in the centre of these pinwheels but they are really thick and sticking up quite a bit. I needed everything secure but didn't want to quilt through the centre because of the thickness. I used this quilt stencil and it turned out great. The centre still sticks up, but it looks like it's because of the quilting, rather than piecing/pressing.

I want to get this finished as soon as possible so I can get a fresh start on my selfish sewing for 2016. I hope you're getting some quilting time in for yourself these days.

HO HO HO

I just finished this table runner for myself. I think I'm in love.
I like whimsical and this fits the bill. When I saw this in my local LQS I bought it immediately, and I have other fabrics from the line to make myself a quilt of some kind. I have a few ideas but can't seem to commit to a design. Something will come to me I'm sure.

This is the overall shot. The fabric line is called Ho Ho Ho, but I don't remember the designer. This pattern comes from a book that uses this fabric line.

I quilted straight lines in the green borders and around each letter and shape. Then I added some snow flakes - I'm very proud of them. Each snowflake is different.

I used my usual method of tracing a design onto the paper on the table at the doctor's office. Then I quilt it and tear off the paper.

This is a good example of selfish sewing for me. There will be more of this in my future - I'm naming 2016 as my year of selfish sewing - more on that later.

Progress Update

The quilting on the red and white Hunter's Star is going well. The quilt is huge so slow going as I have to re-package it to do each row. Today I finished off all the horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. You can't tell much from the front - except where I wobbled out of the ditch, and I'm not pointing those out. The quilting shows up nicely on the back though.

This is pretty accurate to the colour.

I decided to quilt around the stars as well cuz I like what it adds to the back

Tilt your head a little if you can't see it - it was getting dark so the colour and lighting are terrible.

I'm definitely on track to finish for my Sunday deadline - the reunion starts mid afternoon so I might still be sewing binding on Sunday morning. It wouldn't be the first gift I made that was getting finished just in the nick of time.

Happy sewing.

Keep Calm and Quilt On

It's stinking hot here in Southern Ontario these days - high 30s with humidex and I think the heat is starting to get to me.

I'm working on quilting the hunter's star for my cousin, trying to meet my Sunday deadline. And I've emailed my cousin to tell her I think it might be finished.

One thing I've really had to do with this quilt is package it before feeding it through the machine. I've moved from quilting at the dining room table back to the sewing table, so I can package the quilt at the dining room table.

This is the view of how it goes in the machine from above

And this is the view from the side.

It's folded up a lot and it's helping.

What I didn't take into consideration was packaging it as it came out of the machine. I watched it run into the light on the tv table at the end of the sewing table, knock the light off the table, and take the Christmas cactus beside with it. No harm to the quilt but my floor took a bit of a beating and now I really have to replace the pot for the Xmas cactus (my cat knocked it over awhile ago and I've been stalling replacing the pot cuz I can't find anything I like - no more stalling).

At this point I took a break to remain calm. I've got a fan blowing right on me and my a/c is working great so I'm at least keeping reasonably cool. The heat is supposed to let up a bit overnight when we might get some rain - I'm hopeful.

Stay cool and happy quilting.

Quilting Decisions

Last summer I pieced this purple swoon quilt when my quilty friends and I decided to do a "swoon-a-long". They all looked different and it was nice to all be making the same thing. Mine is a gift for my cousin's daughter - to welcome her to the family. She's 5 now, but that's inconsequential.

I'm struggling with quilting this one, in a way I've never struggled with quilting before. I don't know if it's such large spaces, or so much solid space (where the thread really shows) or I'm just in a funk. I looked online for ideas and found some I liked, but when I tried them on my quilt I didn't like them. For the solids I used 2 stencils in my collection. I marked them with a frixion pen and ironed them out - I'm happy with that. I finished that part and now I'm onto the cream part.

My first idea was loop-de-loops.

I don't like them - not loopy enough I think. So I ripped them out and tried again.

I did a split triangle but it had too many pieces - but I liked the idea. I settled on this for the triangles:

I like this much better. I did make myself a stencil and I'm tracing my lines - on this quilt for some reason I feel I must have straight lines and accurate quilting. I've no idea why I feel this way, but I do.

This quilt also has a deadline of Sun Aug 2 - I'm confident I'll get finished, especially since it's going to get hot here again so I'll hide in my house with the fans and a/c and quilt.

Keep Calm and Get the Miracle Cure

Have you seen the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"? In it, the father or grandfather thinks that Windex is the miracle cure for everything. I kinda feel that way about Neo Citran and blue Dawn dish soap. I'll be testing my cure shortly.

Today while sewing my free motion foot started squeaking something awful. So I carefully removed the quilt I was working on, oiled the foot, free motioned something scrap to get up any extra oil, and put the original quilt back in business. Then I noticed an oil stain on my sewing table - which also got on the quilt. I almost cried.

I put baking soda on both immediately and went off to do something else. Disclaimer: You should follow your own cures for oil stains.

The stains looked much better after. I put a piece of tape over the sewing table and I'll wash (to some degree) the quilt after soaking it in some blue Dawn dish soap (which is what I do when I get some oil on my clothing).

Through it all I stayed relatively calm - and it was nice to text my quilty friend L who shared my dismay. I'm sure it will all work out fine!

Improving My Quilting

I've been on sabbatical since Feb 1 and have been sewing a lot - but not doing too much quilting.

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:

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

 The little ticky marks are about half way between the centre and the corner and 1/2" out from the centre line.

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.