Giverny Kaleidoscope Quilt Finish + Big Birthday Surprises: A Bernina Q24 is Coming Next Week (APQS Millennium + IntelliQuilter For Sale)!

Today's post is a long one; I have three things to share with you.  

1. Graduation Quilt Finished Early!

First things first, my lovelies -- I put the final stitches in the binding of Anders' high school graduation quilt last night.  I finished it EARLY, y'all -- graduation isn't until Tuesday, and Quillow Sunday at church is on June 6th.  Woo hoo!!  This was my One Monthly Goal for May, and it feels good to hit the finish line with several days to spare!

70 x 90 Giverny Teleidoscope Graduation Quilt for Anders

I really love how the ombre backing fabric came out, too:

Giverny Teleidoscope Ombre Backing

I ended up doing a 1/2" finished width binding on this quilt because it seemed more proportional to the oversized kaleidoscope blocks than my usual 1/4" binding.  As for the size, it came out right at 70" x 90" before washing it, and I used 100% cotton batting so I'm bracing myself for some shrinkage to happen in that first wash.  I had intended for the quilt to be a little larger, but it will be fine.

Date Night With Jack the Ripper: A Directional Tension Thriller With a Happy Ending

Friday Night with Jack the Ripper

You should have seen the look on my husband's face when I told him I was ripping stitches out of Anders' graduation quilt.  You'd think I just told him that I fed one of our neighbors to the dog or something.  It was all there in his eyes -- shock, horror, revulsion, "how could you do this to me, to us, and to our family?!" blah blah blah.  But a quilter's gotta do what a quilter's gotta do, and sometimes you just have to put on your Big Girl panties and reach for the seam ripper.

So I finished quilting Anders' graduation quilt late on Tuesday night, but when I took it off the frame and flipped it over, I saw a couple of spots where I wasn't happy with the stitching on the back of the quilt.  I know better than to make rash decisions when I'm tired, so I walked away from the quilt and decided to come back and triage in the daylight, after a good night's sleep.  Sometimes I can pick out and restitch small sections of quilting invisibly, knotting and burying the thread tails so you'd never know any "quilt surgery" had happened there.  This was not one of those times.

Tuesday Night, When I Thought I Was Finished

Inspection on Wednesday morning revealed directional tension problems in the first two rows of quilting, about 15" across the entire top of the quilt.  

What the Heck are Directional Tension Problems?

Oh, I'm so glad you asked!  

The Supreme Yumminess of the Hand Marbled Fabrics and the Graffiti Quilting

Earlier this week, since I was all caught up with customer quilts and right on-track with the kaleidoscope blocks I'm making for Anders' high school graduation quilt, I finally -- FINALLY -- got my UFO Bear Paw quilt out of the Purgatory closet and loaded it on my frame for quilting.  I am so excited to finally be finishing this quilt for myself!  I stewed over how to quilt this one for three years, but when I discovered this digital edge-to-edge quilting design, Graffiti E2E #7, by Karlee Porter,  I knew it would be perfect for this top.  

I'm Loving Graffiti E2E #7 on my Bear Paw Quilt!

I started making my 10 1/2" bear paw blocks in May of 2014 as an experiment, chopping up Anna Maria Horner's large scale LouLou Thi print and enjoying the "blobs of paint" effect that created in my blocks, with sections of butterflies or flowers recognizable in the larger patches but not in the small triangles.  Soon afterwards, I got my hands on my first hand marbled fabric assortment from Marjorie Lee Bevis (I think she was selling them through Luana Rubin's equilter.com online shop at that time, but today she sells her fabric directly through her Etsy shop here) and started making 4" sawtooth stars out of them.  

Channeling Aristotle: Using Ancient Design Principles for Better E2E Quilting

Good morning, Lovelies, and Happy Tuesday!  

I often see quilters -- even seasoned professional longarm quilters with years of experience -- crowd-sourcing ideas for quilting designs on social media and in online forums.  You know, "how should I quilt this," "which thread would you choose," and "which panto design would look good on this quilt?"  If the quilter has a computerized machine, there are additional questions about what size to scale a particular design for quilting as well.  My interior design background kicks in whenever I'm faced with these kinds of choices, so I thought I'd take a moment today to explain how the principles of color, pattern, line, and scale influenced the way I quilted this Disappearing 9-Patch baby quilt.  

39 x 53 Disappearing 9-Patch Baby Quilt

Choosing a Quilting Design: Always Start with Function

When meeting with a new interior design client, the first questions I'd ask were always about their functional needs for the space.  How many people live here?  What are their ages?  Do you have young children or pets?  Do you entertain frequently, and how often do you think you'll redecorate?  The answers to these questions influence every recommendation I will be making to ensure that the finished project not only looks amazing, but is also going to work for their lifestyle and hide pet fur if they have pets, with stain resistance/washability if someone sits on a juicebox that the toddler left in the couch cushions, etc.  I look at a client's quilt top the exact same way, so my first consideration is always the quilt's intended function.  

Fresh Off the Frame: A Feather-Licious Peacock Flourish Snowball Quilt for a BRAND NEW Quilter!

Fresh off my frame, and full of fabulously scrumptious feathery texture:

I just finished quilting this snowball quilt for a customer who is also my mom -- this is her very first quilt that she's made by herself from start to finish, and she decided to make it KING size!  Didn't she do a great job?

It's a 12 x 12 layout of 8" snowball blocks that she made following the pattern in the book Quilts! Quilts! Quilts!, 3rd Ed., by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes.  

Why Does Rebecca Need SO MUCH THREAD? And Will It Go Bad Before She Uses It Up?

So here's how the "Firemen Heroes" charity quilt turned out the other day:

"Firemen Heroes" Pediatric Hospital Outreach Quilt

I quilted this donated top using Jessica Schick's Fantasy Flames digital pantograph, scaled to a pattern density of .92, with Glide thread top and bottom in color Lemon Ice.

Top Prior to Quilting

I always like to compare photos of what a quilt top looks like before and after quilting, don't you? With this quilt in particular, simply pieced from large rectangles, I wanted to choose a quilting pattern with curved lines to soften the "brick" effect of the piecing lines and add some movement and interest, but it needed to complement and not overpower the "Firemen Heroes" themed fabric.  

Fantasy Flames E2E Design from Urban Elementz

Had I been using the printed paper pantograph version of this design, the row height would have been 10".  I enlarged that by about 10% for this quilt, both to complement the scale of the piecing and because the batting my guild provides for these charity quilts is kind of on the stiff side, and the intended use of the quilt is to be snuggly and cuddly and comforting for a hospitalized child.  Generally speaking, the more densely you quilt something, the stiffer it gets, whereas more open quilting patterns with more space between the stitching lines will result in a softer, more malleable finished quilt.

Thread Color is Glide Lemon Ice, a Pale Yellow Pastel 

I know some would have chosen a neutral gray thread for this quilt, which would have looked great on the majority of the fabrics, but when I auditioned gray thread on this quilt top it looked dirty to me against the yellow fabric patches.  

Any time I am quilting across a fabric with text, I don't want the quilting stitches to look like scribbles obscuring the words.  In this case, that pale barely-yellow thread just sinks in and disappears.  I can't really visualize what a particular thread color will look like on a quilt just by looking at it on the cone.  I have to unspool a length of each thread I'm considering and lay it across all of the different colors in the quilt top to see which color works best overall, and I can only do that if I have a variety of thread colors on hand to choose from.  Those color swatch cards from the thread manufacturers are helpful for matching similar colors from different thread lines, but I can't use them to pick the best color for a particular quilt.

Speaking of thread...

A Portion of My Long Arm Thread Stash: Glide, So Fine, YLI, Bottom Line, King Tut...

What's the Shelf Life of Today's Quilting Threads?

Several of you commented on my last post with concerns about thread "going bad" faster than we can use it up in our projects.  I found an informative article about that topic here that you might want to check out.  If you don't have time to go read the whole thing, here are the main takeaways:

• No, you probably don't want to sew or quilt with the vintage thread you found at a yard sale or that you inherited from Grandma's sewing basket, because it's likely to have deteriorated significantly and lost most of its strength
• The material the spool or cone is made from affects the thread's longevity, too -- those beautiful vintage wooden or styrofoam spools actually sped up the deterioration of the thread due to chemical reactions between the spool material and the thread fibers
• You can prolong the useful life of any thread by storing it away from sunlight, protected from dust, and at a moderate humidity level (neither too dry nor too humid).
• Not sure whether that older spool of thread is still good to use?  Give it Deborah's snap test

BUT --

• Cotton agriculture and thread manufacturing have seen major advances over the past few decades, such that thread manufactured today is expected to have a much longer useful lifespan than the thread manufactured just 20 years ago
• Synthetic fiber threads such as polyester have a much longer lifespan than natural fibers such as cotton, and they are much less susceptible to deterioration from storage conditions than natural fiber threads.  (This is why heavy duty synthetic threads are used for outdoor sewing applications such as cushions for the deck chairs, awnings, etc.)
• The estimated usable lifespan of high quality cotton threads manufactured today that are properly stored (away from light, dust, and extreme temperature/humidity) is about 50 YEARS!  Wow!  That is WAY longer than I would have guessed, but I found that same statistic from every source I consulted, including from Superior Threads here.  The polyester threads that I run in my long arm machine such as Glide, So Fine, and Bottom Line, are predicted to last even longer than cotton threads.  

So I think it's safe to say that my thread stash is going to outlive me!  This little 40" x 45" charity quilt, with a fairly open quilting design, still ate up over 140 yards of thread (my IntelliQuilter computer calculates that for me when I set up the pantograph pattern).  A densely quilted Queen or King size quilt can eat up 2,000 yards of thread or more, and an heirloom/show quilt with dense microfills can take vastly more thread than that.  Since my favorite long arm quilting threads are not available to me locally and are often backordered, I prefer to have a wide variety of thread types and colors on hand so I can always select the perfect thread weight, fiber, color and sheen for every quilt that comes my way.

Also, thread is yummy like candy but without the calories.  ;-)

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.

I'm linking up today's post with the following linky parties:

WEDNESDAY

Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

Free Motion Mavericks with Muv and Andree

More Squirrels: Multiple New Christmas Quilts, the Quilt to Perpetuate the Patriarchy, and Not Nearly Enough Thread

 Ah, if only the Squirrel of Distraction didn't bring along so many friends...

So the last time I checked in here, I was telling you how I got this "squirrel" of an idea to drop all ongoing projects to make a festive Christmasy tumbler quilt.  But then I bought a bit more Christmas fabric than was absolutely necessary...  So I cut out all of the tumblers I'd need:

6 inch Tumblers Cut Out and Ready to Sew

But then, instead of folding the leftover fabric and storing it away for another day, I grabbed my rotary cutter and ruler and cut lots and lots and LOTS of 5" squares.  I was talking on the phone through my Airpods while I was doing this, not keeping count, and I kind of got carried away.  

So one "quick and easy" detour to make a Christmas throw quilt has segued into something that looks more like a 5-point intersection without any street signs.  I had this idea that I was going to make a Disappearing 9-Patch quilt from my 5" squares.  These are the first two blocks:

Disappearing 9-Patch Blocks

Y'all, the blocks are cute, but this is NOT the way I usually roll.  I was good with cutting out my perfect 5" squares and sewing them together into perfect 9-patch blocks, but when I got to the part in the directions where it says to just chop the block in half down the middle, I wished I'd just cut out little squares and rectangles in the beginning instead of following the directions!  I think this method is better suited to someone with a different personality than mine.  :-). But it's fine, and I'll keep making enough blocks until it's big enough for a throw, or for a bed.  Maybe all red, or maybe I'll use some solid green, too, to set off the red Christmas prints in my stash?

Even so, like I said, I cut way too many 5" squares for just one quilt.  What can I do with the rest of them?  Let me know in the comments if you have a favorite pattern for 5" charm squares!

Meanwhile, I've been shopping and wrapping and shipping like a crazy person...  Or like a MOM in the final weeks before Christmas.  The digital pattern companies have been running sales on their quilting patterns, so I've been building and curating a nice selection of designs for R2D2 (my computerized long arm machine).  I'm looking forward to quilting these new designs as we move into a new year!  

The Charity Quilt to Perpetuate the Patriarchy, According to My Snarky Son

I'm about to get a charity top loaded onto my long arm frame, one which my snarky teenaged son is calling the Quilt to Perpetuate the Patriarchy because it has a fabric that says "FireMEN" instead of "Firefighters."  I didn't even notice that before he pointed it out!  He's only teasing me, but secretly I am glad that he is aware that women can also be firefighters, that little girls might also like to be fire-fighting heroes when they grow up, and that gender-specific job titles can make some people feel like they "don't belong."  But most of these charity tops I get from our guild are made of older fabrics that have been donated to us as part of an inherited stash.  The "firemen" fabric might even be older than my 17-year-old son.  I'm curious whether the fabric companies are more sensitive to this nowadays -- has anyone noticed?

Anyway, regardless of the political correctness of the fabric, this Firemen quilt top is about to get quilted with Jessica Schick's Fantasy Flame E2E design:

Pantograph Laid Out and Ready to Sew

[Side note: How do you like those magnetic Wonder Woman bracelets that my R2D2 is wearing? I stumbled across them on Amazon while I was gift shopping.  They have Velcro closures and 10-15 super strong magnets sewn into the tough mesh fabric, strong enough to hold nails, screws, a wrench or a screwdriver on your wrist to keep them handy.  I am using them to hold my thread snips, my IQ stylus, maybe a couple of pins, and even my bobbin case so I don't misplace it while I'm brushing out lint and oiling my hook.  The magnets are strong enough that there's no risk of the scissors falling off while the machine is stitching.  If you have anyone on your gift list this holiday season who works on cars, fixes computers, etc., this might be a big hit. You can find it on Amazon here].

Although I purchased these magnetic wristbands with the idea of using them on the handles of my long arm machine, I'm finding that I like them even better wrapped around the end of my 2" diameter quilt top roller bar, just off to the side of the quilt I'm working on.  I only wish I could find one in a pretty purple or hot pink!

My Newest Favorite Long Arm Accessory: Magnetic Tool Wristband

Do you have any favorite items in your sewing room that were designed for some other use?  Let me know in the comments!

Back to the project at hand!  So this is how I set up the Fantasy Flames pantograph for this 40" x 45" quilt top.  Since my quilting design is non-directional, I'll be loading the top sideways for greater efficiency.  The green rectangle on my IQ tablet screen represents the full size of my quilt top with an additional 1" buffer on all four sides, just to be on the safe side.  I altered the pattern's row height to get a quilting pattern density (the average length of stitching lines within  one-square-inch) of .92", with a pattern height of just under 13 1/2".  On my APQS Millennium, that should be a good size to maximize the "real estate" of my machine's throat space without running into problems.

Fantasy Flames Pantograph Resized and Mapped Out

I've deliberately adjusted the gap between the pantograph rows to disguise where one row ends and the next row begins, and it's hard to tell from this screen, by my little robot assistant will be able to quilt this out in four passes, stopping between rows for me to clip threads, advance the quilt on the frame, baste the edges of the quilt, and then realign (re-orienting the computer to know where it is on my quilt that I just moved before asking the computer to start stitching again).

After auditioning a few different thread options on the quilt top, I decided on a pale yellow Glide thread called Lemon Ice.  And, by the way, that's another thing I've been up to since the last time I blogged.  I inventoried and reorganized my long arm quilting thread by color instead of by brand/type so I could see where I had "holes" in my rainbow of options, and then I placed thread orders.  Clearly, I just did not have enough thread:

This is What Not Enough Thread Looks Like

Okay, so I picked the Lemon Ice Glide thread for my Firemen quilt and I don't have any similarly colored prewound bobbins in stock, so I wound a couple of bobbins the old fashioned way and threaded up my machine...  But then I got interrupted because my Bernina dealer called and my Main Squeeze 750QE was finally ready to be picked up after waiting her turn for her bi-annual Spa Maintenance for over a month! I'm glad I left her to be serviced despite the pandemic-related backlog, because she had a broken foot, something not right with the bottom cover, and needed some kind of an upgraded grounding cable or whatever.  The broken foot at the bottom of the machine -- who knows how that happened or how long it's been that way -- but it might have been behind my problem with the embroidery module disconnecting from the machine while it was stitching.  Anyway, now that my Big 'Nina is back home and ready to sew, I gave them my Goldilocks 475QE travel/backup machine that hasn't been in for service since I purchased it in February 2019.  Gotta take good care of my machines if I want them to keep perform flawlessly.  Now is a good time to service the little machine, too, because I'm not taking her to classes or traveling with her during this blankety-blank pandemic.

Alright; that's all you're getting from me for tonight!  More Christmas packages showed up on my doorstep that need to be wrapped for snarky boys who have strong opinions about quilting fabric!

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.

I'm linking up today's post with the following linky parties:

THURSDAY

Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

FRIDAY

Finished Or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

SATURDAY

UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

IntelliQuilter Learning Continues: Exploring Digital Pantographs for E2E + Background Fills, with No Sew Zones

 Good morning, lovelies!  After my little R.B.G. block detour, I returned to the cheater cloth panel that I'd loaded on my long arm frame for IntelliQuilter practice.  Feeling comfortable with resizing and distorting block designs to fit less-than-perfectly-square quilt blocks, I decided to practice laying out and sequencing some E2E (Edge-to-Edge) designs.  Oh my gosh, you guys -- I LOVE how my APQS machine stitches these designs out with R2D2 (yes, that's what I've named my IQ) doing the driving instead of me!  Smooth feather curves, crisp points, and perfect circle bubbles with beautiful stitches on the top and bottom of the quilt, no matter which direction the machine is moving.

Aphrodite Grande E2E on Practice Panel

This particular E2E design is called Aphrodite Grande from Urban Elementz.  It's an E2E because this type of design is intended to cover the quilt from edge to edge, irrespective of the piecing lines, borders, etc.  It's a lot faster way to finish a quilt than treating individual blocks, sashings and borders separately, but it also has the advantage of being very evenly distributed quilting method that retains the loft (and therefore, retains the warmth) of the batting better than heavy custom quilting.  E2E quilting generally results in a soft, drapable finished quilt, too, even if the quilt top is heavily pieced to begin with.  So there are lots of reasons to choose an E2E design for a quilt besides just the wallet-friendly price point.  E2E quilting is great for bed quilts, baby quilts, charity quilts, etc., and there are literally thousands of designs to choose from. 

Aphrodite Grande E2E Design

Now, this E2E design and most others like it are available as paper pantographs for use with non-computerized long arm machines.  With lots (and lots!) of practice, some quilters become quite good at following the quilting design on paper from the back of their machines using a laser pointer to guide their machine along the stitching path.  After a few years of trying that, I've discovered that following paper pantographs is not my superpower -- especially not designs like this one with lots of circle details and tightly nested rows of quilting.  I'm excited about being able to vastly expand the number of allover designs that I can quilt out reliably.  

Setting Up a Computerized E2E Pattern on IQ

But there are more advantages to computerized E2E quilting designs compared to following a paper pantograph pattern by hand.  If purchasing a paper pantograph pattern for Aphrodite Grande, it comes in one size/pattern density only -- with a 12" row height.  With a digitized design in IQ, I can stretch any design bigger or smaller, changing the density of the quilting to make the scale of the quilting design more appropriate to the scale of the pieced blocks, or to adapt the design to my (or my customer's) preferences for lighter or heavier quilting overall.  

Stitching Out My Aphrodite Grande E2E Design

Yet another thing I am loving about quilting computerized E2E designs is that, instead of having to keep my eyes on the laser light to follow a paper pattern at the BACK of the machine, I get to be right at the front of the machine where I can see and supervise the actual stitching when the computer is involved.  My hands are free to work in any fullness or "personality" that a particular quilt top may have, as well, whereas if I was quilting a pantograph from the back of a quilt that had "C-cup blocks," a pleat or two might get quilted in those areas of excess fullness.

Other cool things about the IQ screen in the photo above: When I set up an E2E design, or any kind of computerized quilting design in IQ, it tells me how much thread the design is going to use in yards ("Remaining Length: 16.1 yd" in the above photo means 16 yards of top thread and 16 yards of bottom thread are required to stitch the remainder of this practice quilt).  It also tells me how long the whole thing will take to stitch out (excluding the time it takes to stop, advance the quilt on the frame, and baste the edges).  I have two speed settings that I can adjust, the regular Speed that is set to 2.0 inches per second for this pantograph, as well as a Details speed that I've got at 1.6 inches per second for this design.  I can also program IQ to pause or "Dwell" at the sharp points and other intricate details ("dwell points") of a design, and fine-tuning Speed, Details speed, and Dwell enables IQ to sew even the most intricate, complex designs with accuracy and precision.  So very cool! 

Speed and Details Slowed down for Intricate Block Design

In this photo, you can see that I've got IQ slowed down to 1.3" per second regular speed and slowing to .9" per second for this Willow block design.  I also have Dwell on the highest setting (3), which I learned NOT to do because it caused too many stitches to land in the points, creating knots where the machine was pausing too long.  I got better results with Dwell set to 1.  

Willow Block 4 Design

That's the block I was working on in the photo above.  I have a collection of coordinating blocks and border designs in this Willow set and I really love it.  It's what I'd consider a "transitional" feather style because it can work equally well with traditional or more contemporary quilts.  

Willow Block 1

Willow Block 1, Stitched on Practice Panel

Isn't that pretty?  But back to those E2E pantograph designs.  Remember that I said I can change the scale of the designs to make them more or less dense?  I can also use that feature to shrink a pantograph design way down and use it as a background fill for custom quilting, like "behind" an appliquéd or embroidered area in a quilt top.

Shrinking an E2E Design Down as a Background Filler

That's what I've done in the photo above.  This is an E2E digital design called Dewdrops that, in the paper pantograph version, has a row height of 12" just like the Aphrodite Grande pattern I showed you a few moments ago.  But here, I've shrunk Dewdrops all the way down to a row height of 1.75" with a pattern density of 5.73.  The triangular boundary that I've filled with the design is a partial on-point quilt "block" from my practice panel that I mapped out with my machine needle so that IQ knows exactly where the edges of the block lie on my quilt.

No Sew Zone Created so Filler Doesn't Stitch Over Star

Next, I used the same technique of moving my machine along the edge of the area where I didn't want stitching to map out a No Sew Zone for IQ.  

Ruler Work Sashing + SID, Computerized Block + Background Filler

I'm not 100% pleased with the background filler yet to where I'd put that on a real quilt, but I found some additional educational resources that will help me to get better results with it next time.  Same thing with my first attempt at programming the computer to quilt circles in the sashing -- I found that it was faster and easier to just grab my 1/2" Pro Pebbles acrylic template (available from Lisa Calle here) and quilt them by hand with the ruler.  For now, as far as custom quilting is concerned, I feel pretty comfortable delegating some of the block and border stitching to R2D2 in conjunction with hand-guided ruler work and free motion quilting.

But meanwhile, I have a few real quilt tops patiently waiting for E2E quilting and I'm looking forward to picking out the perfect design for each of them.  And then, don't hold your breath, but maybe I can get my Ginormous Pineapple Log Cabin quilt top turned into an actual finished quilt on my bed soon, after all these years!  Remember this one?

Computer Rendering of 120 x 120 Pineapple Log Cabin Top Waiting to be Quilted

That's actually an EQ8 rendering I created by tiling a photo of the first block I finished piecing, repeated and manipulated in the software to "preview" the way the finished quilt would look with borders and everything before I invested the work of actually making all of the blocks.  Here's what the actual finished quilt top looks like, draped over my 12' quilting frame, so you're actually just seeing half of the quilt top in this photo:

Actual 120 x 120 Pineapple Log Cabin Top, Draped Over 12' Frame

Each of those pineapple log cabin blocks has 97 pieces and the strips finish at just 3/4" wide, so this is a VERY heavily pieced top.  It weighs a ton.  In fact, that's why I don't have a photo of the entire finished quilt top to show you.  I was afraid that if I had my husband and son hold it up by the top border, the weight of the quilt top might cause the center to rip away from the border!

At first I was leaning towards a very traditional Baptist Fan quilting design for this 120" x 120" monster, but I really liked the way that Aphrodite Grande E2E design looked when I stitched it out on my practice panel:

Aphrodite Grande E2E on Practice Panel

An allover, updated feather design sprinkled with pearls like this one might be just the thing for my pineapple log cabin quilt, preserving the loft and warmth of my wool batting, without any thready buildup or stiffness from backtracking.  Hmmm...  Decisions, decisions!  Too many choices is a good problem to have!  To all of you in the United States, have a wonderful (and safe!) Thanksgiving this week!

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.

Tuesday's To-Do List for the Week of Thanksgiving:

1. Finish getting another tumbler charity top kitted for my mom to piece
2. Quilt at least two pediatric outreach tops for donation through my guild
3. Bake pumpkin pies, cook Thanksgiving for our small gathering (just immediate family)
4. Christmas decorating on Black Friday!

That should be MORE than enough to keep me busy for the next week or so, don't you agree?  I'll be linking up today's post with the following linky parties:

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

TUESDAY

To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

WEDNESDAY

Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

Free Motion Mavericks with Muv and Andree

Baby Steps Into Computerized Custom Quilting: Using the Cropping and Distort Features of IQ to Fit a Perfect Design to an Imperfect Block

I played with my new IntelliQuilter (IQ) computer robotics yesterday, and I am GIDDY!!!!!!!!  Is that enough exclamation points for you?  If not, here are a few more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!😁

Okay, here's what I'm so excited about.  Check out the feather design I've stitched below, and how the four corners of the quilting design are about the same distance away from the four corners of the "block" printer on the fabric:

Distort Feature in IQ Made My Feather Fit My Wonky Block!

I've loaded about a yard of this vintage cheater cloth on my long arm for practicing custom quilting with IQ, and I was experimenting with placing individual designs in each block the way I might want to do with this quilt if it was pieced rather than a printed design on fabric.  You would think that a preprinted fabric panel would have perfectly square "blocks" to work with, but as I started working with the panel I realized that these printed "blocks" are just as wonky and imperfect as blocks pieced by human beings would be.  

Compare to This Block Without Distort.  See how the Top and Bottom Points are Too Far Away?

The photo above shows the first time I stitched this design, before I discovered the Distort tool.  The digital feather design I'm using is designed to fit inside a perfect square, so when I center it in my imperfect block, it really draws attention to what would be imperfect piecing if this was a real quilt top.  That makes the quilter look bad.  Even if I was using a stencil to mark this design onto a quilt for either hand quilting or freehand machine quilting, I would still have this problem because I'd have a perfectly symmetrical, perfectly square stencil motif that I'd be trying to position on an imperfect block as best as I could.  The Distort tool in IQ lets me drag those corners out of square just enough to align with where the corners actually are on the quilt block in front of me, and when the quilting design is just as crooked as the block, the whole thing looks pretty darned perfect.  Scroll back up to the first picture to compare.

Using Distort Feature to Fit Design to a Crooked Block

I know this might seem complicated when I explain it in writing, but I was able to sew out several of these blocks in the amount of time it would have taken me to just MARK this design on one block for hand guided quilting.  And it comes out so smooth and even and perfect with no wobbles or swear words!  

Red Laser Light Indicates Needle Position

I moved the laser light that used to be attached to the back of my machine (for following paper pantograph patterns) to the front of the machine, and positioned the light so it shines right down into the center of my hopping foot to mark my needle position.  The first step for every custom quilt block is to map out the outline of the block for IQ so it knows the exact size and shape of the space I'm wanting to fill with a design. That's four quick clicks as I move the red dot of light to each of the four corners of my block.   (In the photo prior to the one above, the purple square represents the outline of the block I traced on my quilt).  Then I insert my design into the block and can resize, rotate, or distort as needed until it looks good to me before sewing it out -- all without having to make ANY markings on the quilt top.  

The second exciting block tool I learned to use today is the Cropping feature.  This lets me position a whole block design onto a half block, like you might have along the sides of a diagonally set quilt, and just crop (chop!) off the part of the design that extends beyond the edge of the quilt.  I mapped out my triangular half block for IQ using Mark On Quilt to define the block boundaries, positioned the same whole block design I'd been using before, and used the Rotate, Resize and Distort tools just like I'd done in the full block.  Then I used the Cropping feature to chop off all of the stitching that would have been hanging off the edge of the quilt, like so:

Resized, Distorted, and Cropped (Chopped!) to Fit Half Block

And here's how that one stitched out:

Same Digital Design, Cropped to Fit Half Block

Eight years ago, when I was quilting Lars's Drunken Dragons quilt with my Bernina Artista 200/730E embroidery module, I encountered this same situation where I had a commercially digitized quilt block design file for the circles, and I needed half block designs at the top and bottom edges of my quilt.  Let's take a quick detour down Memory Lane...  

Adding Awkward FMQ Around the Too-Small, Commercially Digitized Half Block

Whole Circle Block, FMQ Completed

Finished Quilt.  Half Blocks at Top and Bottom.

I remember spending hours trying to edit that design in my software to make a half-bock version and was ultimately unsuccessful (but SHERRI at Lee's Creative Sewing & Vacuum came to my rescue and created an altered file for me that worked).  So it was like magic yesterday to just go CLICK-CLICK-CLICK in about a minute and have IQ chop off half the block for me instantly, leaving me with a beautiful half block that stitched out perfectly where I needed it to go.

The other thing I'm remembering as I look at that quilt from 8 years ago is how frustrated I was that "quilting in the hoop" with my embroidery module restricted the size of my quilt motifs to what would fit in the embroidery hoop for my Artista machine.  One of the primary attractions of my current Bernina 750QE machine when I bought it was the additional throat space that would accommodate larger embroidery hoops for this technique.  So there's a continuum for me between those early quilts where I wanted to quilt a beautiful, intricate design beyond what I could free motion using "in the hoop" and what I'm doing today, which is a lot like "quilting in the hoop" but without any hoop size restrictions at all!  

Back to the practice quilt on my long arm frame today:

Cheater Cloth Practice Quilt, Awaiting Further Experimentation

Now, if this was a real quilt instead of practice, I would have done SID (stitch in the ditch) around the blocks and sashing before I started in with the block designs.  And I probably would not be picking an ornate feather design to stitch on top of a busy pieced block, either.  I foresee that there will be more empty alternate blocks in my quilt tops just so I can quilt out pretty designs like this one where they can be seen!  

So, what's next?  I think I might pop my ruler base on the machine today and switch back to my ruler foot so I can do some fake SID along my fake printed sashing.  Then I can try telling IQ to quilt a background fill design all around -- but not through -- the star blocks in the next row. Probably ought to review the videos on using those features before attempting it in real life, but really, the Help feature in IQ makes it pretty easy to just fumble around and find what you're looking for.  The most valuable thing I gained from the training videos is that I know what the software is capable of doing and I know the tools are in there to be found.

Also, it is so gratifying to finally quilt a pretty feather design that does not look like a macabre necklace made of ogre toes.  And I didn't have to spend 900 hours practicing them before I got them to look nice.  I just had to delegate the execution part of it to my new studio assistant, R2D2!  She is DEFINITELY the droid I've been looking for...

My Quilting Droid, Awaiting Instructions

Happy quilting, everyone!  I'm linking today's post with the following linky parties:

SATURDAY

UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt