WIP Wednesday - the quilting one!

When Angela Walters would say, “Quilting is the funnest part!”, that would grate on my ears. No offence to Angela, I’ve signed up for 2 of her Craftsy classes and learned a lot – she is a great teacher. But that phrase would always get inside my head and my inner voice would say nope its not!

It’s not because funnest doesn’t sound quite right and most fun pops into my head every time I’d hear that phrase, I think its because when you are learning free motion quilting, its kind of tricky, a little bit difficult! Not so much fun.

Concentrating hard,  stitching out of the ditch instead of in, messing with tension, learning to co-ordinate hand movement to foot speed and ripping out quilting (I wonder why I bury threads when its so hard to rip out teeny tiny quilting stitches!) -  takes a bit of practice, a small dollop of hope, a large dollop of fearlessness and a ‘what’s the worse that could happen?’ attitude. It’s definitely not fun at the beginning, at least not for me.

This week though I think I might just be getting at the spirit of what Angela means!

I’ve seen the question asked are you a quilter or a piecer and I would instinctively be on the piecing side, though I do prefer when possible to quilt my own projects. I have 2 quilt tops sitting, waiting for me to get brave enough to take the plunge and quite a few that needs finishing.

This week intending to finish the binding on my Swoon quilt for my cousins wedding, I found myself wanting to quilt not piece, for the first time ever!

Maybe its the Dog Gone Cute cushion I’ve been making using Lorna's pattern or the quilt writing I attempted in last weeks tote bag or maybe its just my new Janome or the fact that I hate binding but my hands have wanted to quilt all week and here’s the thing, it was fun!

I really enjoyed the whole process this time around and didn’t feel the pressure to not mess up my piece like I usually do! I still did some practice sketches and 1 practice piece to get the dog paws in my head and then just went for it!

Normally when drawing I try not to allow words in my head and just think about moving a little bit this way, a bit more that way but when quilting the dog paws I found it really useful to talk to myself and say wiggle a little bit, mushroom, button, button, button, button and wiggle a bit again. For some reason this helped me keep the shape in my head. Anyone else do that - talk to yourself while quilting?

Some are quite good, some not so good but all are ok and no ripping required! Apart from the quilt writing.  I think I did ok with Patch and Charly but the T in Toby looks more like Yoby! For some reason that makes me smile!  We used to call him Tobes, Tubsy, Tobster - I should probably change the Y but I am tempted to leave it!

The Dog Gone Cute Quilt-A-Long has started and Lorna has the instructions up on her blog for making dog number 1 & 2.  It will be my turn on the blog hop where I get to show you my finished  cushion of our Jack Russell Terriers and I hope to make the 60" x 60" quilt for myself! Fingers crossed I'll get that done in time!

If you want to see more the hop participants are here and posting progress over the month of September following the QAL:

Tuesday, October 6
Karen of Run Sew Fun
Kris of Kris Loves Fabric
Anja of Anja Quilts
Kelly of Quilting it Out
Tish of Tish’s Adventures in Wonderland

Thursday, October 8
Carol of Just Let Me Quilt
Nina of Inchworming
Doris of The Quilting Queen Online
Brandy of Pampered Pettit
Leena of Creative Instincts

Tuesday, October 13
Ruth of Charly and Ben’s Crafty Corner
Tanya of Tanya Quilts in Colorado
Laurel of Quilts by Laurel
Kathy of Kathy’s Quilting Blog
Deb of New Creative State

Thursday, October 15
Anita of Daydreams of Quilts
Gina of Quilts and Cakes
Beth of Words & Stitches
Rachel of Quiltineering
Julie of Mack and Mable

Tuesday, October 20
Cathy of A Quilting Chick
Selina of Selina Quilts
Shauna of Shauna’s World
Gayle of Pedal Sew Lightly
Kathy of Kayak Quilting

Thursday, October 22
Sandy of Upstairs Hobby Room
Heide of Heide’s Quilty Hugs
Britt-Inger of Hill Valley Quilter
Judy of How ART You?
Louisa of Sewmotion

Tuesday, October 27
Teje of Nero’s Patch and Post
Stephanie of Jak and Will
Valerie of Val’s Quilting Studio
Ellen of Georgia Florida Studio
Cristina of Pretty Little Quilts

Thursday, October 29
Abigail of Cut & Alter
Magdalena of iloveneutrals
Jenn of A Quarter Inch from the Edge
Anne of Batiks by the Bay
Susie of Susie's Sunroom
Tracy of Tracy’s Bits N Pieces

More Quilting!

So I made a start!  I can't say everything was foolproof and I had a few hiccups along the way but I spent a good bit of Saturday evening  and most of yesterday quilting.

I started by stitching in the ditch, thinking if I broke this up into sections, it would be easier.

My new mini Pfaff came with a quilters kit and one of the feet in it was a stitch in the ditch foot.  Sadly my Pfaff and Viking feet are not interchangeable so I tried the ditching with the smaller machine.

I was sceptical when I saw this attachment and thought with a bit of practice why would I need it? I have to say that it did make it a bit easier to stay in the ditch though not not foolproof.  Human error still creeps in from time to time!

For the free motion loopy l's I had planned I switched to the bigger machine.  Last year, as a birthday present to myself I bought an extension table.  My Husqvarna Viking is designed as a home dec. machine with an embroidery attachment but no extension table.

A bit of googling universal extension tables gave me sewingmates.com and this big 24" table.  I figured if I was going to pay for postage across the pond might as well get the bigger one!

Normally I have fabric under it, and rotary cutter , scissors etc. but I cleared the space to make room for smooshing the quilt around.  This is as tidy as the kitchen table gets!  It's fully adjustable so I hope I'll never need another one!

I started with the loopy l's in the borders crossing the squares and everything was going grand until the last row.  I broke a needle.  I did notice the quilt being a little tight to move just before the needle broke so did the usual, cleaned out the bobbin case, re-threaded and started again and broke another needle.  It was then that I realised my hopping foot was broken!  It had slid backward and the needle instead of going through it was hitting it and snapping. 

With one row to go and kind of getting into it, I didn't want to have to stop, so I thought I'd try the embroidery foot that came with the bag of embroidery accessories for the machine.  This one is solid metal but with no springs.  To be fair when the machine is in embroidering mode this thing whizzes about the hoop so I thought why not give it a go?

Well it was perfect, far better than the springed one - why have I not being using this all along?  I finished off the loops and did a bit of stippling in the centre squares.

Then it was all straight line with the baby blue aurifil thread to finish off the centre with diamonds.

I didn't quite get it finished so no link up with The Littlest Thistle for first quarter finishes.  She's nearly there though. Just the outer border to go.

All the advice from last week's post (thanks you so much!) really helped the confidence and just to try it.  One of the things mentioned was to break up the space into sections, so I did some straight line quilting (3 lines) in the outer border to give me two spaces to work with.  I'm thinking of a loopy stipple in navy thread to blend into the background.  If the brave streak continues I might try spirals!  I found this really cool blog when taking Tomomi's advice and googled free motion quilt design.  The In Box Jaunt has really lovely flower designs I'd like to do next!

I did get some puckering in the straight lines as well as one or two spots on the quilt (very annoying!) I found the longer the line of quilting the more chance of it happening even using the walking foot.  I did spray baste this quilt and worked hard to keep it smooth but with all the wrangling through the throat space, maybe next time, I'd add safety pins to the outer border too as well as the spray glue. The other thing that kept happening was the wadding kept fuzzying up the quilt top.  I gave up using the lint brush and will just have to wait until it is trimmed and bound to de fuzz it!

Still, the nerves are gone, I was very tense doing the the loopy l's but relaxed a bit on the stippling!  I''ll be away with work for most of the week so this will be waiting for me and now that I'm almost finished I don't want to do anything else!  First time that's happened in a while!

Linking up to Design wall Monday and