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

Quilting!

I'm a little bit stuck.  I'm having a confidence crisis with this quilt.  I love how it is looking so clean and crisp but I'm afraid to quilt it!  Normally I would just straight line or do a wiggly stipple if I have no clue what I want the quilting to look like.  Thing is I'm afraid I'm going to mess this one up!  I'd like to keep it looking boxy but not be boring!  I could be over thinking this one, just a tad!

To try and break myself out of this and as I am only learning free motion quilting, I made some practice sandwiches last Sunday morning and have been playing with designs and trying to figure what to do.  For some reason I found it easier to get into a rhythm of loopy l's when doing big l, little l rather than big l the whole way across.  I really like the scroll too though it is a bit harder.

Loops and stars I'm getting better at bit could do with more practice on flowers and clovers.  Still after filling up 3 practice sandwiches I'm still clueless.  Paula in our Thursday night sewing class suggested interlocking circles in red, which would be really cool but I'm not that brave, not yet!

So I went back to the drawing board and started playing with layers on Photoshop elements and came up with this.

A bit of l's and some straight lines.  Outer navy edges maybe straight lines or a stipple in matching thread.  What do you think?  Does this work?

On a plus side while all this indecision was going on I started cutting my triangles for the Triangle Quilt-A-Long at Sassy Quilter.  I've heard this being called Crafternation (crafters procrastination!)

As I'm going for a rainbow effect I'm cutting a few, selecting the next colour, cutting some more and building it up.  It's starting to come together nicely.  Can't believe how big these triangles are!

Loving this project and no hesitation or indecision with this one yet!

Linking up to

WIP Wednesday

The Triangle -A-Long at the Sassy Quilter  has started and since I've not done anything with equilateral triangles before and I've heard they can be fussy to work with, I've decided I might as well join in and learn a thing or two!

I don't have many rulers and I try not to buy speciality ones but I did buy this triangular ruler along with a wedge ruler for Dresden plates last year.  I did use the Dresden one but have done nothing with this one.  It doesn't have the creative grids stick to your fabric like glue backing so I've attached a film of Invisigrip by Omnigrid.  It's supposed to aid in griping to your fabric using static cling.  I'll let you know how well it works!

It was also suggested to starch your fabric a lot to help with bias.  I'm rubbish at keeping bias edges straight so not having Best Press in our shops here in Ireland I'm going with the old fashioned stuff. 

I'm using a Florence fat quarter bundle and may have to add more yellows to it as I'm hoping for a rainbow effect from the centre for this quilt.  The idea is based on Anna Maria Horner's design from 2012 called Patchwork Prism.  It is a totally gorgeous design that was offered free and it uses different sized templates.

Paula provided us a blank template to colour in and with the triangles for this project all going to be the same size and I'm hoping it will come out something like this: 

 Well that's the plan anyway! 

To see what everyone else is working on this week I'm linking up to

Modern Irish Bee: Broken Spider Web String Block

 

The deadline for my last Bee block for March was fast approaching so on Saturday I spend some time finishing these broken spider web blocks for Sarah.  Sarah gave us some pointers on the Modern Quilt Guild of Ireland blog page and linked to this Tutorial by House Of A La Mode

Sarah's colour choice was bright and happy with a low volume text print or grey centre. To make the centre star more prominent we were asked to use strips 1.5" to 2.5" of the same colour family but different prints for each of the centre pieces.  That meant we needed 8 prints.  This wasn't too easy and involved a fair bit of rummaging in the scrap basket and I thought I would need to cut into a fat quarter or two, but amazingly I found strips in pink and green that would work.

For this block you need a 12.5" square of grey cut into 4 quarters along the diagonal.  There are specific instructions on the tutorial to draw a line on the triangle to place the first strip. This is the only strip sewn to the grey triangle.

All the remaining strips are sewn to each other and the template is used to trim the pieces up at the end.

Once the excess from the strips is trimmed away, the extra background fabric can then be trimmed.

Then it's playing with the layout to make sure the centre colours work well together and sewing them in quadrants to make 2 halves and then finally together.

Sarah asked us to watch out for the centre strips and try to match points here as best we could. 

To get this block to come out at 12" you would need to use a scant 1/4"(sew just inside the 1/4" mark) as when sewn with a true 1/4" this comes out just about a 1/4" short.

Sarah advised the block would be a little short of the tutorial and to send as is which was great!  Big relief not to have to unpick these guys!

I had made broken spider web blocks using this method for the Craftsy 2012 Block of the Month.  If you haven't seen these videos by Amy Gibson they are brilliant.  Amy is very clear in her instructions and makes it all look so easy!

I have to say I much prefer Sarah's colour choice for these blocks.  The grey and bright combination is just gorgeous!

Linking up to Design wall Monday and

I'm in the mood for Basting!

I think I'm obsessed with squares!  I have 3 quilt tops finished and they are all squares and rectangles, but it is nice to finally have some tops pieced and be getting a bit closer to some quilting.

Charm Pack Cherry (free pattern FatQuartershop)

Quilt for Mexico (Creative Quilting Pattern)

Bachelors Walk (own design with a little help from Claire!)

This one is the only one of my FAL 2014 Quarter 1 goals I have a hope of finishing so this weekend it's going under the needle!  That is after I've pressed and basted it first.  I don't think I have enough safety pins to baste 3 quilt tops so I'm going to try and spray baste this one and pin baste My Quilt for Mexico as even though I absolutely love the Charm Pack Cherry quilt it doesn't have a deadline to aim to and will have to come last on the list!

After this, I think it might be time for some triangles!   There is a Triangle Quilt-A-Long happening at the Sassy Quilter and I have a bundle of Denyse Schmidt Florence that I have no plans for and a 60 degree ruler I bought but never used so I think this is the project for it.  (And I've not forgotten about the 86 flying geese I have to make!)

Linking up to
Whoop Whoop Fridays,  TGIFF, 

MQGI Medallion Quilt-A-Long update

 

It's been 3 weeks since the last update on the Baby Medallion quilt, where did those weeks go to?  At this point we should be finished border #3.  Even with the extra week given to us by Cindy I'm only just finished border #2 and about to start border #3!  Now it's not all bad news, it's coming together nicely if a bit slowly.  All the math's are working out so far and paper piecing the diamonds turned out to be a good decision as they are all so straight and pointy!

And I got my clouds made

And my balloon stitched down!  Just need to add some tails to the kite and the centre panel will be finished at last!

We are following Melanie's guidelines (Catbirds Quilts Medallion series) and she suggested to take the time between borders 2 and 3 to make sure everything is squared up.  This turned out to be great advice.  After the first checkerboard round things were a little stretchy.  Adding the plain frames to grow the dimensions to a number divisble by 3 for the diamonds really helped.  I trimmed back the inner border to 2.75" all around and added the pink 1.5" strips.  I made sure the length cut was correct for the width and height and used a lot of pins to add this frame.  It eased in any stretchiness (?) and pulled the quilt into a more rectangular shape.  I have to admit I was a bit nervous making the cut hoping I hadn't gotten the math's wrong but sometimes you just have to do it and see what happens.  All worked out in the end ok, so now round #3!

I had great intentions at the weekend but then ended up a tad under the weather and did nothing for the whole weekend!  So this is where I'm at:

The plan for this round of borders is to add flying geese!  86 of them + 4 more hearts!  I bought a charm pack and a layer cake of Hubba Hubba by Me and My Sister and this will be used for the next 2 rounds.  I've used a lot of scraps from Me and My sister fabric ranges in this already and their designs are really child friendly, bright and happy which is what I'm going for here.

Only question now is which method of Flying geese do I use to make them?  Flying geese are traditionally twice as wide as they are high.  (Quilters cahce and Instructables have nice explanations of these methods with diagrams and step by step instructions if you are interested in making your own.)  I'm looking at using 4" wide x 2" high for this border.  I'm not sure what the quickest method is. 

A is charm pack friendly, has a little waste and requires sewing them all up individually
B has no waste and does make 4 at a time, all identical and will need them sewing up individually
C, Foundation paper piecing,  makes them up in strips as you go along and guarantees perfect pointiness, but will inevitably have more waste.

I'm leaning towards C.  What do you think, what's your preferred way to fly?

Linking up to  Modern Quilt Guild of Ireland