The last post ended with a bit of a cliff hanger. I'm sure you have been asking yourselves, 'What Happened Bernadette?!?' Well, your long-awaited answer is here. Free motion quilting is a lot of fun. As I was going along I began to remember tips that I had read on other websites. Now I know understand what everyone was saying. (These pictures show the back. The quilting shows up much better there)
Here is a list of things that I learned. These are all things that I had heard before but they never made sense until I tried it.
1) Start in the middle and work your way out. I kind of did this but I also left bits (in the middle - that space in between the 'crop circles') that I thought I would go back and do. This is going to be difficult because this middle area now has quilting on all its sides boxing it into a perfect bubble. I'm unsure how to proceed with this.
2) Choose a small pattern so that you can motion freely with small movements. Initially, I decided that these big circular movements would be a great idea. It was not. I had to move the quilt around a lot and this resulted in a lot of tugging, repositioning and therefore lots of little jagged seams instead of smooth motions. The meandering bits in the corners were a whole lot easier to do and the stitching is smoother and more consistent.
3) Pin. Pin. Pin. Then pin some more.
Will definitely be doing more of this next year.
Happy Holidays!
Thank you Michele from Quilt Bloggers for arranging a block drive to make quilts for those effected by Hurricane Sandy. I signed up to make four. And I did and sent them off. Then I thought, 'Come on Bernadette, you can do better than that'. So I made more, and more blocks. Then it became a quilt top. Funny how these things just happen.
I was inspired by (copied the design from) Helen. Thanks Helen!
I'm now going to attempt to quilt it the real way. I had such success with the straight line quilting, how hard can free motion be? I have this special foot that my mom gave me over the summer. I've been too intimidated to take it out of the box. But I just did and I put it on the machine!
Baby steps. There were also two extra pieces in the package.
I'm not sure what they are for. Maybe they are just extras like those miscellaneous bits that come with Ikea furniture. Ok. Here goes.... oh but maybe I'll start in a minute. I really should update this blog first.
That's right. Two posts in two weeks! Today I went to the NYC Metro Mod Guild meeting. It is always so inspiring. I showed my summer challenge quilt (a little bit late); a baby quilt using Thomas Knauer fabrics. I was happy to give it to the Sandy Quilt drive.
It had been brought to my attention that the quilt design resembles a hurricane, and perhaps the recipient might not see any humor in the irony. But the guild concurred that the resemblance wasn't strong enough to worry about.
This was also my first foray into straight line quilting. It was surprisingly easier than I had imagined! I think I'll do a lot more of this.
Update: Here is a link to a photo of me showing the finished product at NYC Metro Mod guild meeting. Thanks for the photo Jess!
