I am continuing to participate in a year-long series of tutorials on free-motion quilting. SewCalGal, one of the most energetic web-bloggers ever, is offering monthly opportunities to learn new skills.
The April lesson shows a new technique for quilt marking that is going to make my quilting life much easier! My progress below:
I traced the printed design on a piece of tulle (sheer net fabric also called 'illusion') with a permanent fine-line marker. The tulle is then stretched in an embroidery hoop.
Next, I used a SewLine ceramic marking pencil to trace over the design lines, thus marking a piece of cotton fabric.
The pink lines will wash out later.
This sample was next layered with batting and a piece of backing fabric. I used a spray basting product to hold the layers together.
Here is the stitched sample. I added an additional line of stitching around the design and did some stippling. I find the stippling very difficult and will switch over to a more formal 'fill' such as 'bouncing bananas.' Once the pink lines are washed out, my errors--not following the lines precisely--will be less obvious.
I need to practice this again.
A closer view.
This month has been very busy, and it is only half over! Quilting time has been limited. The ideal would be at least 20 minutes a day of practice; well, no--the ideal would be eight hours a day of quilting-related activity, to include practice, warm-up, and quilting on my current project as well as progress on my many other quilts-in-the-making.
A gal can dream, can't she?
I suppose one way of dividing the world up would be to group people into those who have never heard of a JUKI, and those who have. For the latter, a JUKI is a very fine mechanical sewing machine; it has no bells and whistles (fancy stitches) but it is known among quilters for its excellent stitches in piecing and free-motion quilting. It is larger than most domestic sewing machines, with a bigger throat space (very helpful when one is working on a large quilt.)
I am continuing to practice free motion quilting, this time following suggestions from Ann Fahl's tutorial on SewCalGal's website. The busy fabric makes the quilting harder to see, although I used a contrasting thread.
This 'ripple-stipple' and 'frond' are designs I learned from a class with Diane Gaudynski. I was using pink thread for this practice session.
Ann Fahl suggested loops and squiggles with little shapes like stars and hearts interspersed. I was having a hard time not making jerky motions. One must have 'slow hands' for this work.
I was more comfortable with spirals. This is the back of the work, where I had white thread in the bobbin.
Ann Fahl freely crosses her lines of quilting; I am not entirely comfortable doing that.
This shows the back of 'ripple-stipple' and the 'frond.'
Loops meandering over the work. Again, one is crossing the stitching lines. I believe I will continue to avoid doing that, but this is an assignment. See? Sometimes I follow directions. This was actually the first design I worked on, but my photos uploaded in reverse order.
