As is true for any skill,
if you want to get good at quilting, you need to quilt – at least a little bit
every day. I haven’t been doing that,
and I think that’s the reason for being stifled about finishing several tops
that are pin basted. I don’t know what I
want to do and I am hesitant, because I am afraid of messing them up.
I have always had a
sandwiched smaller square handy on which to warm up, check tension and practice
patterns. Recently, I made up a bunch of
them and have practiced at least 15 minutes every day. What I notice is that even a jumble of
different patterns has its certain charm – so maybe I shouldn’t be so gripped
about what pattern to use, just letting my mood guide me. Maybe there is such a thing as too much
planning. I love feathers and they take a lot of practice, so I always work on several every session.
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| Somehow this hodgepodge looks good to me. |
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| Combing several patterns together |
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| Paisley and feathers are similar and can be combined to good effect! |
So yesterday I dug out a
bunch of really bad batik fat quarters I had bought a long time ago from
Joann’s. I had a left over chunk of
batting from another project and I have a bunch of cotton polyester fabric I
bought at an estate sale (I bought 21 yards of fabric for 4$!) In the course of 2 hours I had created a
simple 3’ by 4’ top and pin basted it. I also found some inexpensive polyester
embroidery thread that quilts quite well.
Now I have something large-ish to play with. When it’s done, I think I’ll go ahead and
bind it and throw it in the car – it can be used for back seat naps as well as
padding for transporting delicate stuff.
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| My practice quilt. |
Besides regularly
visiting Leah Day’s and Dianne Gaudynski’s sites, I have been recently taking a
Craftsy class from Angela Walters on quilting negative spaces. Right now I am fooling around with outlining
smaller areas to fill in. Her example uses
overlapping rectangular tiles, but I am experimenting with the same technique
using circles as well as irregular shapes.
This definitely has some possibilities.
I am figuring out what needs marking and what doesn’t as well. The outer circle and its echo look better if I mark them, for example. The photo below is the quilting from the back, which shows up better.
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| Stacked circles from the back. |
Yesterday I bought some
Fine Line rulers and am playing with their use as well for doing both straight
line and curved cross hatching. I am
having a lot of fun, feel more confident and now am looking forward to working
on finishing those waiting tops…
10 comments:
Hi Moni
Good work - your quilting looks great and I agree, you just have to practice all the time. I'm doing Angela's class too - I figure that there is always something to get from each lesson no matter how much quilting we do. Keep up the good work!
Love all of you FMQing!
Wow! These are bee-you-tiful. Great job.
That last picture is amazing! Is there a name or source for that design or is that just awesome creative freehanding? :)
Your quilting is beautiful, I would not worry that you are messing up. Just go for it, you'll be surprisedd at how well you do.
Wow..your quilting looks amazing. Particularly like the stacked circles.
What good ideas. Thanks. I also find that a variety of designs go well together. Must make a large practice piece as you did. Your feathers are especially nice. I will be posting more of my work shortly. I think it is time to go with a solid back..
Thanks for all the kind comments!
To answer bentneedle - that's all freehand. However, I eventually decided that I needed to mark the outline circles first. After that I filled them with a variety of patterns.
To Donna: solid of lightly patterned backs not only look cool, but are particularly helpful in seeing tension and other issues.
I discovered that doing the class project from Ann Peterson's Craftsy class was what I needed to make a beginning on a project that I'd basted but hadn't gotten past the stitch in the ditch stage.
I think you will find the same thing when you finish your bigger practice piece. By the way, I love the way the mixed up designs look in your small practice pieces.
Your FMQ looks wonderful! I have been practicing on baby quilts roughly the same size as your practice top. It helps lots! I have learned lots from Leah Day and need to supplement that now. Thanks for some ideas! ~Jeanne
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