Better Late Than Never: February 2012 FMQ Challenge Completed, Feathers With Diane Gaudynski

Embroidery Disaster Saved by Free-Motion Quilting!

Remember the 2012 Free-Motion Quilting Challenge hosted by SewCalGal?  Each month last year, a different free-motion quilting expert provided an online tutorial with a practice exercise.  We were supposed to complete all twelve by the end of the year, but I didn't even find out about the challenge until June I only managed to complete seven by year's end.  Although I was brand-new to free-motion quilting at the beginning of this challenge, I found that setting aside a couple of hours once a month to practice quilting motifs has made a HUGE difference -- like the difference between drawing with a pen in my hand versus trying to draw with a pen clasped between my toes.  Well, SewCalGal recently announced a "second chance" for those of us who did not meet the goal in 2012, and I now have until October 31st to finish the remaining challenges. 



So, back in April I spent something crazy like 6 hours embroidering this enormous Jacobean bird design, only to have it shrink up and pucker when I attempted to press the finished piece from the back side?  (I have a theory about that, by the way -- I had layered a piece of unwashed muslin beneath the silk shantung prior to embroidering for extra stability, then trimmed away the excess when the embroidery was complete.  I think the muslin backing shrank when I ironed it).  

Ruined Embroidery Project, Ripe for FMQ Practice

I decided to use this ruined embroidery project for FMQ practice, to see whether I could quilt out those ugly puckers and ripples between the embroidered areas.  I spent several hours yesterday and today working on Diane Gaudynski's February 2012 feather tutorial, and I could not be more thrilled with the results.  I have admired Diane's machine quilting, and the machine quilting of her students, for years, and I own both of her wonderful books.  Still, I've not felt up to the challenge of trying to quilt feathers until now.  This is the first time for me just sitting down at the machine and quilting feathers over and over again.  They're far from perfect up close, but much better than I ever thought I would be able to do.  And, thanks to the FMQ challenge, I now know that my quilting skills WILL get better and better, the more I practice.  If I can do this, ANYONE can learn!

 

So yes, I was able to quilt out all of the puckers in this embroidery design, and what's more, I managed to quilt some passable feathers and lumpy-but-acceptable pebble background quilting.  I have long struggled with both of those designs and have been practice-doodling feathers on my iPad for months.  Wahoo!

 

 

Can you believe this is the exact same project as the ugly wrinkled mess in the previous photo?  I almost threw this away!  Now I like it so much that I have to come up with something to do with it.  The finished piece is 16" x 20."  Any ideas?  I suppose I could just square the edges, bind it, and call it a "mini wall quilt." 

 

I'm Quilting Feathers! 

I attempted several different feather styles, but even though the traditional, backtracked feathers are supposed to be the most difficult to quilt, those were the easiest for me -- probably because that's the way I've been doodling them.  However, I was NOT doodling the stem correctly, so all of my stems are a bit wonky.

 

My fabric is a glitter-flecked silk shantung layered with Hobbs Tuscany Silk batting and muslin backing.  I used #100 silk thread in the needle and 60/2 Mettler cotton embroidery thread in the bobbin, with a size 60 Microtex needle, tension reduced to 1.50, and BSR stitch length set to 1.5.

 

It even looks cool from the back, see?

 

Back View

 

So now that's one more down, and only four more to go.





The Fierce Art of Applique: Why Real Quilters Don't Have Fingerprints

Finally Stitching the First Applique Block!



After spending the last few days preparing applique shapes for stitching, pressing tiny seam allowances with starch and a big, hot iron, I no longer have fingerprints.  I have a deeper appreciation for those who craft masterpiece quilts with thousands of itty bitty applique pieces, and if this quilting thing doesn't pan out, I'm all set to become a gangster.  They can dust for prints all they want, but they'll never prove it was me...  ;-)  I'm working on Applique Block One of Erin Russek's Jingle BOM project, which you can find here. 

Starch-and-Press Tools

This is my first attempt at hand applique (as opposed to fusible machine applique), and I'm using the starch-and-press method that Erin demonstrates in her blog tutorials.  Her tutorial is fantastic, but it's definitely not as easy as it looks!  I'm using Mary Ellen's Best Press in lieu of diluted liquid starch because I went to three different grocery stores near my home and NONE of them carry liquid starch.  Plus Mary Ellen's Best Press comes in "aromatherapy" flavors, and the lavender kind smells yummy.  So I put the Best Press liquid in an Avent baby bottle, thinking that the markings on the side would be useful if I needed to dilute the starch, the small opening at the top (where the nipple would go) is perfect for dipping the stencil brush, and the airtight cap seals it up nicely between pressing sessions -- you know, when I've gone off to slather my fingertips with burn cream...

It took me a long time to make all of the pieces for this block, and I just did it in batches of 5 or 6 pieces at a time.  I will say that the first leaf was the hardest, and it did get easier after making more of them.  Erin posted a special tutorial for making the cardinals, but I still don't think I did the face and beak parts correctly. 

Bird Suffers from BBS, Bulky Beak Syndrome!

Because those pieces were so small, but I still needed a turn-under allowance all the way around, I had a ridiculous amount of fabric bulk and was not able to get the beak as tiny as the pattern specified.  I was hoping that I could tighten it up along the edges when I stitched the birds to the background fabric, but that didn't work out, either.  I probably should have trimmed away more of the black and red layers beneath the birds' faces, and maybe even slimmed down that turn-under allowance.  I think that on the next bird block I will try running a gathering stitch along the turn-under allowance of the beak and see if I can get a smaller seam allowance and flatter finished beak that way.  I have to think about this some more; maybe if I figure out how to do the beaks better on a subsequent block I'll be able to come back to this one and redo them. 

Step One: Embroidered Stems

Step one for this block was embroidering the chain-stitched branches.  Erin used two strands of embroidery floss for her branches, but I used perle cotton because that's what I had on hand in the right shade of green.  This probably resulted in thicker stems or branches or whatever they're called, but I think it will be fine. 

Birdie Eyeball: The "Black" Embroidery Floss that Turned Out to be Gray

Then, of course, I had to cut out all of my little shapes, press the raw fabric edges under with starch, and preassemble my little birdies.  The pattern had tiny circles marked for the cardinals' eyes, but it didn't specify how you were supposed to make them.  After looking at some images of cardinals online, I decided to satin stitch the eyes with black embroidery floss and then outline with a backstitch in gray.  I had some variegated black and gray DMC embroidery floss, so I just unwound that and cut out the darkest section of floss for the eyeballs and a lighter gray section of the floss for the outline.  After finishing the eye of the first bird I realized that the "black" section of the variegated embroidery floss was actually a very dark gray, but I decided it was fine.  Maybe my Christmas cardinals have cataracts!

I opted to glue baste all of these pieces onto the block background prior to stitching anything down because I noticed that my shapes all finished slightly larger than the pattern pieces, probably because when I traced the shapes and cut them out I cut outside the line instead of inside the line, and then there's that little bit of bulk from the turn of cloth on top of that.  So I thought I should make sure everything was going to fit nicely before I started stitching anything in place. 

I positioned my fabric background over the paper pattern and used my light box to precisely place each bird and leaf, securing every piece with dots of Roxanne's Glue-Baste-It.  I had a fleeting thought during this process: "Gee, this is going nicely!  I'm surprised the fabric isn't shifting on the paper pattern more!"  I ignored this thought, and when I had finished gluing down all the pieces I discovered that I had been so zealous in my gluing that I had glued the block to the paper pattern!  Fortunately, I was able to tear away the pattern and remove the bits of stuck-on paper from the back of my block with a tweezers.  I further secured my applique pieces with 1/2" applique pins for added insurance.

Back View of Applique In Progress

After all that drama, the actual applique stitch is easy-breezy.  Since you can't see the stitches from the right side, here's what it looks like from the back (above photo).  I'm not sure how close together the applique stitches are supposed to be, but since I'm using a very fine, 60 weight 2-ply cotton embroidery thread, I thought I should err on the side of stitches too close together rather than risk having the stitches too far apart. 

 

I still haven't make the nine 3/8" diameter berries for this block yet, but I did mark their placement with a faint silver pencil.  Looking over the directions, the little stuffed circles might actually not be that bad, since you gather the fabric allowance smoothly around the circle template with a running stitch before setting it with the iron.  That means I don't need to stick my fingers under a hot iron to push the fabric edges into place as I'm pressing them!

 

I can't believe it's noon already.  I have so much to do today!  Happy Monday, everyone!

Mother's Day Flowers: What's Blooming Now

My sons and husband took me to the garden center yesterday to pick out some new annual and perennial flowers for Mother's Day. As usual, my eyes were bigger than my flower beds, so we had to get creative about finding homes for some of the new plants, like this lovely fuschia snapdragon lookalike that we had to squeeze into the Flower Dump. I don't remember what it's called, but it's a perennial and it likes full sun.

I picked out these fancy geraniums to add to pots on my front steps. The purple pansies were planted there via bird poop. I'm sure the birds did this deliberately to thank us for all the bird food we've been putting in the feeders all year.

Bernie has a weird aversion to cannas, which I can't relate to at all. They are tall, dramatic, and bloom pretty constantly throughout the summer. Since I'm the Momma and I get to pick the flowers on Momma's Day, I chose these unusual peachy-pink cannas with splashes of yellow...

...as well as these yellow cannas with splashes of peachy-pink. I have some red cannas from last year in big pots on the front steps. This summer, I want a wild mix of colors. It will be interesting to see how the garden develops as all of these plants begin to take off.

Last but not least, I wanted to share these yellow irises in the Flower Dump that Bernie rescued from a nearby property where the house was demolished to make way for a new subdivision. Aren't they pretty?

Happy Mother's Day, everyone!

Christmas Tree Number Two: Woodland Forest Theme

The second tree at our house is sort of a "woodland forest" theme.  It all started with a beautiful wire and glass bead garland I found in a catalog several years ago, pictured as part of a tablescape.  I bought a bunch of them for this Christmas tree, and I think it looks like glittering ice and snow.  Then a snowflake ornament thing started, and then I bought a couple of feathered bird ornaments, which blossomed into a full-blown bird ornament obsession.  I looked at hundreds of tree toppers before choosing this blown glass star topper from Christopher Radko, but I didn't like the way it was made to attach to the tree so Bernie made some custom welding modifications for me, and my sparkly sprays at the top of the tree cover up the wire spiral that secures the star to the tree.

New to the tree this year are the true red poinsettia sprays and the red cranberry sprays.  I had sort of burgundy poinsettias on this tree in previous years and I couldn't stand them another year.  Now that I have more red on this tree, it works with the first Christmas tree skirt I ever made back when Lars was a baby and I was sewing on a Husqvarna Viking Rose sewing machine. 

As you can see, the concept is really similar to the subsequent skirt I made for the kids' tree, but I was much more limited on the other machine when it came to built-in decorative stitches to embellish the patchwork seams.  There's no hand embroidery or beadwork on this skirt, just readymade gold piping trim and machine embroidered poinsettias on every other skirt section.  If you look carefully, you can tell that I had to do some gathering around the center hole at the middle of this first tree skirt, too, because I made the pie slice pattern too wide on the skinny side and I didn't end up with a flat circle when I sewed all the pieces together.  Live and learn!

That's it for today; back to work for me!  I'll show you Bernie's special Christmas tree in a few days.  Happy Advent!