Amish Baby is ALMOST Finished: Continuous Curves, Olive Loop Border and Free-Motion Stars

Amish Baby 54-40 Or Fight: In Progress, Nearly Complete

This baby is due to be born within weeks, and it looks like the Amish Baby 54-40 Or Fight quilt will be finished right on time.  I wanted to do a quick post about how I did the continuous curve quilting on the square patches, the olive loop border, and the free-motion stars in the lime green blocks, mostly so I can refer back to the post someday when I want to dust these techniques off and use them again.

In my last post, I was struggling with how to get those free motion continuous double curves to look relatively even on the red and white square patches.  I ended up making myself a little template out of gridded template plastic, 2" square to match my patches, with little tiny holes punched out a quarter inch in at the center of each side. 

My Template for Marking Continuous Curves

That made it really easy for me to mark my quilt with dots (the Bohin mechanical chalk pencils are the perfect diameter for marking through these holes with just a twist).  I found that when I had those dots on the quilt it was a lot easier to quilt the continuous curves because I had something to aim for to keep the arced stitching lines about the same depth and with the arc center in the correct spot. 

Free Motion Olive Loop Border

Next, I quilted olive loops in the outermost border.  I first saw this motif in Judi Madsen's long arm quilting and I have been doodling it on my bulletin during the sermon at church...  shh!  Because I'm planning to use 2" wide satin binding for this quilt, I marked a chalk line indicating where the edge of the satin binding would be to ensure that none of my olives would end up under the binding.  And I just stitched this one freehand, trying to deliberately include some olives that were larger or smaller than others (because I knew they were not all going to come out identical).  I think this came out really good for my first try.  Definitely going to use this one again!

I could have just done the continuous double curve quilting in all of the square patches, but I wanted to bring in a little smidge of whimsy.  So I found this little squiggle star motif -- it's actually part of an embroidered outline quilting design from a collection I bought ages ago.  I resized the squiggly star on my photocopy machine until it was exactly the size I wanted it, 1 1/2" to nestle nicely inside the seam allowances of my 2" squares.  Then I used a marking method that I learned from Don Linn's April 2012 tutorial for the SewCalGal FMQ Challenge.  In Don's tutorial exercise, we used wooden embroidery hoops, bridal tulle and an extra fine point Sharpie marker to create a mark-through template for transferring quilting designs (you use either the purple disappearing marker or the blue water soluble marker to draw the design on your quilt, NOT the Sharpie!).  Since my motif was pretty tiny, I asked my husband for a small plastic ring from his Garage of Handy Manly Stuff.  I just wrapped a piece of tulle around the plastic ring and held it in place with a ponytail elastic.



Basically, you trace your quilting design onto the tulle with the Sharpie.  Then you can place the hooped tulle over your quilt and use the temporary marking pen to trace right over the design on the tulle.  I could have used my embroidery design software to resize the embroidered quilting motif and stitched the stars out with my embroidery module, but it would have been overkill for something so simple and it would have taken a LOT more time to hoop and rehoop over and over again for every single star.  It's actually a lot easier to FMQ a SMALL quilting motif than a large one, and these stars were quick and easy to quilt last night.  Anders was hanging out in my sewing room watching Tom & Jerry while I quilted the stars.  :-)

Free Motion Stars!

Finally, since I was all threaded up with the lime green thread, I snapped on my walking foot and quilted some straight(ish) lines in the green border.  I placed them approximately 1/4" from the seams, which framed the embroidered text nicely without crossing over the stitching, and I think that the straight line quilting is a nice contrast with the curvy olive loop border and the curvy stippling in the black background fabric.

I think I want to leave the green star triangles unquilted and puffy, but something needs to go in the royal blue square patches.  I am leaning towards more squiggly stars.  Lastly, I might do some really random quilting in the outside of the green border, where it will be covered by satin binding, just to shrink it up and flatten it out a bit.  If I leave it totally unquilted and just attach the border, I'm afraid the border will look wavy.  Once all of the quilting is complete, I'll trim off my excess batting and backing and serge the quilt edges (I always do that with satin binding quilts, to protect the quilt edges in case the satin binding wears away over time and needs replacing).

Meanwhile, I am taking a break from quilting today so I can hem my new choir robe and personalize the fit a little bit.  (The sleeves are too long and the hem is crooked).  Happy weekend and happy stitching!

I Call FINISHED: 2012 Free-Motion Quilting Challenge, Completed At Last!

All Twelve; All DONE!

TODAY is the deadline for SewCalGal's Second Chance entries for the 2012 Free-Motion Quilting Challenge, and I have finished my twelfth and final challenge entry just a few minutes ago.  (Click on the above photo to enlarge it so you can see all 12 pieces).


Hybrid April 2012 & October 2012 BONUS Challenge Exercises

Since I had already completed eleven of the twelve required challenges, I decided to combine Don Linn's April 2012 tutorial for using tulle mesh to mark a quilt top with Diane Loomis's October 2012 Bonus tutorial for machine trapunto.

Wooden Embroidery Hoop, Bridal Tulle, Sharpie Marker and Don Linn's Design

First, I traced the quilting motif from Don's April tutorial onto bridal tulle with an extra-fine point Sharpie marker.  Then I used one of those purple disappearing ink markers (BAD move!) to trace over the tulle on top of my silk dupioni fabric.  And then I spent WAY too much time drawing concentric lines spaced half an inch apart throughout the background, which I planned to fill with all sorts of fun designs at the end, but alas this was not meant to be for reasons you will understand shortly.

Design Transferred to Silk Fabric with Purple Marker

Once I had my fabric marked, I switched to Diane Loomis's tutorial for machine trapunto.  I threaded up my machine with YLI water-soluble basting thread in the needle, 60/2 cotton embroidery thread in the bobbin, lowered my upper thread tension considerably so my sewing machine would play nice with the specialty thread, and layered a piece of Quilter's Dream Poly batting, Request loft, beneath my glittery silk fabric, with NO backing.  I quilted just INSIDE the marked purple line with my water-soluble thread and then used my rounded tip Dovo embroidery scissors to carefully trim away the excess poly batting from the back side, just next to the stitching line.

Back Side of Design, Excess Poly Trapunto Batting Trimmed Away

Then I layered my silk piece over a large piece of thin cotton batting like what I normally use for machine quilting with a piece of muslin backing so I had a quilt sandwich.  I switched to silk thread in the needle and left the 60/2 cotton embroidery thread in the bobbin.  I started to quilt around the decorative motif again, just OUTSIDE the purple line this time, but I had to stop before I was finished so I could make it to my kids' school in time for the Halloween parties.  (I'm a 5th grade room parent and I had food and craft activities to set up and supervise).  When I got back to my sewing room a few hours later, I discovered to my horror that all of the lines I had so painstakingly drawn in purple ink had almost completely disappeared while I was gone.  I attempted to redraw some of the lines, but the silk fabric was kind of ripply from the trapunto work and would not lay perfectly flat anymore, and it was too late for me to start over because the challenge deadline is TODAY and it's Halloween and the door bell is about to start ringing...  So I had to just go with the flow and do the best I could under the circumstances.

I was able to quilt around the center trapunto motif fairly accurately because I could clearly see the previous stitching in basting thread even though the ink had vanished prematurely.  Then, because the clock was ticking, I switched to my walking foot and tried to quilt as many of the straight lines as I could.  Once I realized they were crooked and wonky and I was going blind trying to follow marking lines that no longer existed, I made the Executive Decision to call this one FINISHED.  I did, after all, complete both Don's tutorial exercise for marking the quilting design, as well as completing the steps for machine trapunto from Diane's tutorial.  I added some pebbling around the trapunto design so I could see the dimensional effect of the added padding better, and practiced a couple of border designs between my crooked lines.  If the rest of my lines hadn't vanished before I could quilt them, my last step would have been to wash the finished quilt or soak it in water to dissolve the basting thread.  (That sounds like a Laundry Challenge, don't you think?)  I WILL try this machine trapunto technique again, but I am putting all of my purple markers in with my machine embroidery supplies from now on so I never make the mistake of marking a quilt top with them again.  The BLUE markers that wash out in cold water are what I should have used for this assignment!

Well, the clock is ticking, so I'd better do a quick recap so I can get this post up before the Linky closes.  Here are the links that will take you back to all twelve original FMQ Challenge posts on SewCalGal's blog, as well as links to my own post for each completed assignment:

1. Angela Walters' July Quilted Tiles tutorial, my efforts posted here on 7/3/2012
2. Ann Fahl's March Thread Dancing tutorial (no longer available online), my efforts posted here on 7/19/2012 
3. Wendy Sheppard's August Jester Hat tutorial, my efforts posted here on 8/12/2012
4. Paula Reid's September Feathered Wreath tutorial, my efforts posted here on 9/30/2012
5. Teri Lucas's October Signature tutorial, my efforts posted here on 10/20/2012
6. Frances Moore's January Leafy Vines tutorial, my efforts posted here on 10/24/2012
7. Sarah Vedeler's November Spirals tutorial, my efforts posted here on 11/28/2012
8. Diane Gaudynski's February Feathers tutorial, my efforts posted here on 6/16/2013
9. Cindy Needham's June Divide and Conquer tutorial, my efforts posted here on 7/20/2013
10. Leah Day's May Foundational Stippling tutorial, my efforts posted here on 10/9/2013
11. Patsy Thompson's Border Design tutorial, my efforts posted here on 10/25/2013
12. Don Linn's April Tulle Marking tutorial and Diane Loomis's October Bonus Machine Trapunto tutorial, my efforts posted right here at the top of THIS post, right now, at the last possible moment on 10/31/2013!

All Twelve Together: My (Two) Year-Long FMQ Journey

I want to send a HUGE thank you out to SewCalGal for hosting the 2012 and 2013 Free-Motion Quilting Challenges, to each and every one of the teachers who graciously donated their time and their tutorials, and to all of the sponsors who donated prizes to keep the excitement going over the past two years.  I'd also like to thank all of the other 2,000+ participants world-wide who made the commitment to spend a year working on their free-motion quilting skills and to share photos of their struggles and successes in the Flicker group and on their personal blogs.  Seeing photos of everyone else's progress online has been so incredibly inspiring and motivating, and when I look back at my own earliest quilting samples it's amazing to see how much my quilting skills have improved over the last year and a half.  I wouldn't say that practice makes PERFECT (yet!), but at least now I know I'm on the right track!

By the way, if you're at all interested in machine embroidery, you won't want to miss SewCalGal's Fall Machine Embroidery Blog Hop that runs all next week.  I'm scheduled to post on Wednesday, November 6th, and I have some VERY unique embroidery designs to share with youyou.  We will all be featuring machine embroidered projects from a talented professional digitizer, sharing best practices for machine embroidery, and I believe we will each be hosting a fabulous GIVEAWAY, so be sure to check back November 4th through the 8th!  Here's the official schedule and lineup of machine embroidery bloggers for that event:

Monday, November 4th

• SewCalGal – www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com

Tuesday, November 5th:

• I Have A Notion  - http://www.ihaveanotion.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, November 6th:

• ME! ME! ME! -  Cheeky Cognoscenti   - http://www.cheekycognoscenti.blogspot.com/
• Patsy Thompson Designs - http://www.patsythompsondesigns.com/blog/ 

Thursday, November 7th:

• Beaquilter - http://www.beaquilter.com/
   

Friday, November 8th:

• Stormy Days - http://stormy-daysblog.blogspot.com/
• SewCalGal – www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com

 
Now that I got all of THAT out of the way, I can get on with my Halloween!