First of Four

I've made progress on the Shady Lanes quilting.  

I picked one pattern to quilt, got through two of the square areas and hated how it felt and looked.  Ripped it all out and started with another design.  I sewed that for a while and thought of yet another design... but was unwilling to rip it out again.  The current pattern is looking better the more I worked on it. 

At this point the colored areas are all quilted:  one design outside of the diamonds and another design inside.  I've starting quilting the black diamonds, which are fighting me.  Initially I was going to use black thread, but I couldn't see what I was doing.  The grey thread I had was lighter than I wanted.  I usually love blue, but nothing auditioned well.  I ended up picking cinnamon, which surprisingly looks better than I anticipated.

OMG November Finish

It's quilted!  Admittedly, this photo was taken before it was finished (the top border wasn't quilted yet) - but I wanted good sunlight to show off the quilting.  Today it will rain.  To top it off, I had run out of thread at this point and had to buy more.  I sat down last night with a new spool of thread and finished the border.

This was more of a challenge than I had anticipated because I started a new job halfway through the month.  I set out having a ton of time to quilt this, then it all disappeared.  I was also amazed at how much time I spent staring at this quilt.  I'd get a patch done, then have to sit and look at the next section before I figured out what to quilt on it.  Improv quilting looks so cool how it flows together, but for me, the actual sewing of it was far less than flowing!  My wall was plastered with doodled examples of what I wanted to sew and I still found myself stuck more often than not.

I had intended to quilt it with a mixture of freemotion and ruler, but once I got it underway I stuck with the freemotion.  I was keeping the border simple since the rest of it was so complex:  wavy chevrons, using a ruler.  Should be easy.  Ha.  I think I ripped out every third chevron.  I'm still learning the ruler work and I'm still having a lot of trouble getting it to do what I want.  Obviously I need more practice with it (and maybe watch some videos).

I Like Thursday: Work, Boars, Glasses

Wow, this week flew by.  Let's see - I'm working... there goes a lot of my time.  We took in a couple of guinea pigs to foster.  Wrangling pigs took up more time (so far these bad boars have been good).  Somehow I managed to finish quilting the main portion my quilt, too!  Yay!  I have to finish the border, which I hope to do this weekend.

 

Creekbed

After the snow the sun came out bright and cheery.  When the wind died down a bit, I rushed out to get photos of Creekbed.

Creekbed Progress

I finished the quilting on the creekbed quilt.  Lots of freemotion practice as well as some ruler work.  When I was thinking of quilting patterns, I was going to do an all-over pattern for each block.  The quilt fought me on that.  It also disagreed on an all-over pattern across the entire quilt.  In the end, it wanted each strip quilted - which was way more quilting than I had intended.  It seems better to let the quilt get its way.

I did a mix of patterns interspersed with simple wavy lines.  I got to try out a few new designs and practice several of my favorites.  My stitching is fairly even - probably because of the small areas I worked in.  If only my quilting was so even when working larger areas!  Well, I'll get to practice that with my next quilt.

Putting Together a Pillow

I decided to make the little HST quilt into a pillow for my mother.  I had the front all put together and wanted more than a plain back.  So I started working on a Side B.

When I first put together my selvedge string block pattern, it was for a 6-inch block.  I made four of them before switching to an 8-inch block design.  That was good for a center, but I needed to stretch it to 16 inches.  What to do for a border?  Well, I happened to have a bunch of blue and red HST from the braid quilt.  I liked the red ones best with this center.  It's kind of an odd effect.  Hey... it's the B-side.  I decided to roll with it.

Golden Orrery

My sister's quilt is done!  I think this is the most photos I've put in a single post. Which is fine - because this is also my year-in-review post for what I've quilted.  This is it! (Except for a name tag I made for a fellow dancer.)

I named it Golden Orrery (thanks, Quinn, for the idea!) because of its clockwork and stars.  No planets - is it technically an orrery without planets?  Well, I'm sticking with that.

Onto Binding

Can you believe it?  Those two words bring me joy:  onto binding.

I ran into all sorts of issues with the ruler foot.  I'd really like to find a good jumping ruler foot, like the one I use for freemotion quilting.  Some stars rays are a little jerky and if you look closely, it's where I hit a seam.  Darn.  Any time there was a change in thickness, it would want to pull or jerk.

Also ran into issues with some of the long rays - my ruler would suddenly catch and I'd stop dead in my tracks.  I was more than half done with the border when I discovered it was hitting the hinges of my sewing machine cabinet.  Once I understood that, I moved things around so the ruler didn't stick too far to the left of the machine.

I ended up sewing the remaining border stars standing up.  Standing over the machine helped to keep an even pressure on the ruler (not always, but better than sitting down).  It was a better angle, too, to see the star come together and place each star-ray.

Getting in Gear

Once I finished the background of radiating gears and suns were stitched, there were two bare patches left.  At first I thought I'd extend some of the border to cover them, but once I started quilting the border I decided that wouldn't work.

Since the border is all stars, I thought the two bits of background should feature more gears.  Gears needed patterns.  I spent Sunday morning tracing and cutting paper patterns.  Cans of various tomato products and a plate served as my circles (I really need to buy a compass).  Three basic size did the trick.

Background and Borders

The background and borders have been coming together much faster than the circles.

The sun rays were so much fun to fill in.  Some of the larger ones required me to stand up to see where I was quilting.  I don't think I've ever quilted while standing over the sewing machine.  It was an interesting viewpoint - I'll need to remember to do this when I have a long, large pattern I can't see when sitting down.  It wasn't as difficult I thought it might be (and comfortable, at least in short bursts).

Circles Filled, Onto Background

Last circles quilted!  I'm onto background next.

Everything so far has quilted flat and smooth.  Oddly enough, it was this last one, on an outer corner, that bulged the most. 

No tucks!  But the orange triangles are very puffy, and there's a bulge where the last red triangle and the black band meet.  The basting had all still been in place, so I'm not sure why that happened.  The only reason it's so noticeable to me is that everything else quilted absolutely flat.  Amazing.  All that time I spent sandwiching and basting really paid off.

Eight, Nine and Ten of Thirteen

Progress slowed a bit. But I'm still plugging along.  Three more done, three more left.

These circles all have gear edging.  I really struggled with the last one - the quilt kept threatening to pucker and the foot got caught on some of the seams.  The tricky bit was that the cogs went all the way around - but they lined up pretty evenly out to the raw edge.  Yay!

The middle one does not yet have its cogs.  The circle is not along the quilt edge and requires the teeth all the way around.  Gotta do some math or some measuring or something so I don't have one teeny-tiny or massively big tooth where the quilting meets.

Who Thought Gears Were a Good Idea?

I'm going to start giving the quilting Borg designations:  this one is Two-of-Thirteen.

Who the heck had the idea that quilting cogs around the circles was a good idea?  Oh, yeah.  That would be me.  I thought it was a good idea.