Quick DIY Apple Pencil Holder + Progress on 1984 Sampler Custom Quilting

 Oh my gosh, you guys!  I completed a whole sewing project from start to finish last night in under an hour!  This is what it must feel like to own a sewing machine but NOT be a quilter!!  

A Sewing Project Completed Start to Finish in Under an Hour!

This is something I’ve been “fixing to do” for a couple of years now, just “waiting to get a round tuit” that never arrived…  No pattern; just eyeballed an old, stretched out elastic contraption that needed replacing and replicated it with some purple elastic from my garment supply stash and a little piece of jacquard ribbon to make it pretty.  This elastic strap slips on and off over my iPad case quickly and easily and has a channel stitched to securely hold my Apple Pencil.

I even used one of the high tech gizmos on the new B 990 sewing machine.  When top stitching my ribbon in place with Edgestitch Foot #10D, I turned on the laser that shows exactly where my needle is positioned to stitch on my project; see that red dot below on the black ribbon?

B 990 Laser Helps Position Edge Stitching

On previous machines, I would have tried out different out of center needle positions one click at a time, lowering the needle to see how far I was about to stitch from the edge, but it was faster (and more fun) to just turn on the red laser dot.  One, two clicks to the left, looks perfect, GO!  I only turned the laser on to select my needle position; did not leave it on for sewing.  I used two different utility stitches, the three step zigzag stitch to overcast the raw cut edges of my elastic to prevent fraying with use, and the triple straight stitch around my ribbon flower and along the edges of the long, skinny pocket for holding the Apple Pencil.  I used Mettler Metrosene all-purpose polyester thread and a Schmetz Stretch needle in size 90.  I wish I had a closer thread color match to the color of my elastic, but I wanted a strong poly thread for durability and I don’t have anywhere near the stash of colors in all purpose poly that I have for quilting, appliqué, embroidery etc.  This was an impulse project chosen primarily so I could procrastinate packing for my trip.  

Maybe I should do more projects that don’t take 6 years to finish?  

Speaking of projects that take years to finish…  I did get a bit more quilting done on Marybeth’s 1984 WIP sampler quilt this week.  I added some hand guided ruler work quilting to the three blocks that I quilted with computerized designs the last time I posted about this project:

Continuous Curves Ruler Quilting Added Around Digital Block Design

My hand guided quilting is nowhere near as nice as the computerized design but the block looked unfinished to me before.  I’m doing the best I can but it’s a learning process and if I keeping stopping to rip out quilting and redo it, I’ll never get the quilt back to Marybeth!  

Halo Progress, Welcome Home Kit NewFO, and A Creative Tangent with the PhotoSketcher App

Hey there, quilty peeps!  Hope you are enjoying a wonderful Memorial Day weekend if you're in the United States, and I hope the weather is nicer where you are than it is in Charlotte, North Carolina right now.  Rain, rain, and more rain!  Good thing I have a bright and cheerful project on my design wall since the view outside my window is so drab and dreary.  

Halo Blocks Still In Progress

This is a Jen Kingwell pattern that is suitable for either hand or machine piecing.  The pattern is found in Kingwell's Jenny From One Block pattern booklet and you can find that on Amazon here (this post contains affiliate links).  

I'm fascinated by the way Kingwell organizes her seemingly random scrappy compositions so studying the way she alternates between "organized chaos" vs careful control within the same quilt is my primary fascination with this project.  The curved piecing challenge is just the icing on the cake.  In Kingwell's version of this quilt, most blocks are totally scrappy except for three blocks that are created with all one fabric for the backgrounds, all one fabric for the rings, and all one fabric for the triangles surrounding the center square.  Whereas the circles at the block intersections predominate throughout most of her quilt, those three blocks that have planned matching fabrics pop out as squares that help your eye travel across the surface of the quilt.  Here's one of my blocks that I'm hoping will function that way in my version of Halo:

One of My Favorite Recently Finished Halo Blocks

The dark pink arcs were cut from one of the Tilda fabrics in the fat eighth precut pack that started me off on this tangent.  The rest of the fabrics in this block are treasures from my stash.

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.  

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

Goal Posts for November: The IntelliQuilter is Coming!!

Good morning!  It's Election Day in the United States, but we've already voted early so there's nothing to do about that except wait and see what happens...  With civic duties already completed and no further power to affect the election outcome, I may as well shift my focus to what I CAN control: Quilting goals for the week and for the fresh, crisp month of November!

This Week's Goals:

Letter Home Monogram Baby Quilt Nearly Quilted

1. I'm still working on finishing up the last of my October goals, my Letter Home Monogram baby quilt.  I've finished quilting another row since the photo above; just didn't get a picture when I left the machine for the night.  This would have been finished yesterday, had I not spent THREE HOURS on the phone with Apple Tech Support yesterday afternoon, attempting to resolve the Mystery of Why My iPad Can't Install an iOS Update Without a Factory Reset...  Anyway, with just a couple more hours of quilting today, then trimming, labeling, and binding, this little quilt will be ready to ship off to the one-month-old baby for whom it's intended.  

Look What's Coming TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!

2. OH MY GOSH, you guys -- today is Quilter's Christmas Eve at my house, because FINALLY after waiting for over two months since I placed the order, I have a tracking number for my IntelliQuilter computer robotics system that has been put on a truck in Ohio and is cruising down the highway, headed straight to ME!  According to the tracking number, it should arrive by noon tomorrow.  We'll be self-installing the system, so that's my second goal for this week: Installing, adjusting, fine-tuning and testing the new computer robotics system for my APQS Millennium machine.

One Monthly Goal for November

Getting comfortable with the new iQ system is my OMG for November.  I've already gone through all six hours of training videos that my dealer provided, but once I have my system installed I'll want to go back through those lessons hands-on and work through the exercises with my machine.  I'll be quilting up some practice e2e/computerized pantograph designs and playing with the density and scale as well as experimenting with some computerized custom quilting.  Woo-hoo!  

I'm linking up today's post with:

TUESDAY

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

·       One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts. 

WEDNESDAY

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

·       Put Your Foot Down at For the Love of Geese

·       Free Motion Mavericks with Muv and Andree

LAL#9: The One About Computer Assisted Long Arm Quilting

 Hello, my lovelies, and welcome to yet another Long Arm Learning!  My feature from last week is Julie of Pink Doxies, who linked up a post about the challenges of computer assisted custom quilting and if you missed it you should definitely check it out here.

I just spent at least 45 minutes ransacking the Internet in a fruitless effort to locate a ridiculous magazine ad that I remember from a few years ago.  I couldn't find it, and I don't remember which brand long arm machine or what quilting system it was, but the ad showed a young mom wrangling at least two or three small children, and in the photo you could see a computerized quilting machine behind her in the other room, stitching away.  The headline said something like "Mommy is working now!"  The idea being that this amazing computerized long arm machine would be stitching away, quilting a customer quilt while the stay-home-quilter-mom was free to give her undivided attention to caring for her children.  You know, like putting a quilt in a crock pot all day and then when you pull it out at dinner time, it's perfect!

Julie's Computer Assisted Custom Quilting Layout

Of course this is a fantasy land depiction of what computer assisted long arm quilting is REALLY like.  You can't just walk out of the room and let the computer do its thing unsupervised, as all sorts of things could go disastrously wrong if you weren't there to stop the machine.  Especially with custom quilting, the quilter needs to be there to tell the computer where the boundaries of every block are, since real piecing varies from one block to the next, and to tell the computer which design goes where.  But the perception persists among many quilters that computerized machines are just totally automatic, that the quilter just presses a button and walks away.

In real life, computer robotics adds a whole new dimension to long arm learning.  There is still creativity involved, as the quilter selects combinations of designs to complement the quilt top, and because the quilter isn't limited to only the designs she or he has practiced to perfection, there are vastly more design possibilities to choose from.  There is time spent planning the entire quilt, and often there are challenges in programming border and sashing designs that are very similar to the challenges hand quilters and hand guided machine quilters face in adjusting stencil designs to fit borders and turn corners nicely.  

Anne-Marie's Computer Assisted Edge-to-Edge Quilting

Anne-Marie of Stories From the Sewing Room also linked up some terrific computer assisted long arm quilting. With the edge-to-edge type designs shown above, the challenge is ensuring that the rows of interlocking patterns match up precisely with each advance of the quilt on the frame.

Does this mean I've fallen out of love with hand guided quilting?  Definitely not!  My absolute favorite quilts are the ones that combine a variety of techniques, with some elaborate computerized designs that would be impossible for most quilters to execute freehand, combined with ruler work and free motion fills.  The more tools in your tool box, the better!  In fact, instead of quilting anything this past week, I've been piecing a baby quilt top for which I have grand ruler work plans...

What quilting have YOU been up to this week?  Remember that any and all machine quilting is welcome here.  This linky party is like one of our local radio stations whose tag line is "We Play Anything!"

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Using Stencils to Develop Muscle Memory for Long Arm Quilting, Part One

My DIY Stencils, from Designs in Judi Madsen's book

No quilting to show you yet, but I've been planning and experimenting this week with stencils for my Spirit Song quilt, and I think this is going to work.  Woo hoo!  

Both of the designs on these DIY stencils shown above were resized and traced from quilting designs that were on the CD that came with Judi Madsen's Quilting Wide Open Spaces book, available on Amazon here.  

My Spirit Song Quilt, Waiting Patiently on the Frame

I know that some of you will look at this quilt and say that I should have just gone with an allover pantograph and moved on, so I should probably explain that Spirit Song is a practice quilt that I'm making specifically for developing my long arm quilting skills.  I got lots of SID (Stitch in the Ditch) practice with all of these seams, and I can tell you that my SID was a lot better by the time I got to the bottom edge of the quilt than it was when I started at the top.  Now I'm looking at how I can complete this quilt with ruler work and very basic free motion motifs.  

Muscle Memory: How Using Stencils Can Speed Up Learning for Free Motion Quilting

Some people advocate that the best way to learn to quilt smooth, even free motion motifs is to just "go for it" and try your best, covering a dozen -- or a hundred -- quilts with lumpy, wobbly quilting that will gradually improve from one quilt to the next if you just keep at it.  But this doesn't make sense to me, from an education theory perspective.  The more time I spend quilting misshapen ogre toe feathers on my quilts, the more I am ingraining the muscle memory for ogre toe feathers and the more difficult I am making it to unlearn and correct bad habits.  Wouldn't it be better to practice quilting smooth, evenly spaced, nicely rounded loops and feathers from the very beginning?  Consider how penmanship and figure skating have been taught for hundreds of years:

Remember How We Learned Cursive?

Remember these worksheets from elementary school?  Our teachers had us trace over perfectly formed cursive letters so that we could develop the muscle memory we would need to recreate these shapes on our own.  Penmanship practice develops muscle memory using our fine motor skills, but operating a long arm quilting machine requires a similar level of control using the larger muscle groups in our upper arms and shoulders... That's why I can draw beautiful loops and feathers on my iPad or on paper that I am not able to recreate with my long arm machine.  I'm using totally different muscles, gross motor skills involving coordination of my shoulders, torso, and upper arms rather than fine motor skills of just my hand.  Which reminds me of how figure skaters learn to precisely and exquisitely control and coordinate large muscle groups for compulsory figures.  Check out the surface of the ice after a figure skating competition -- if I had that level of control with my quilting machine, I could free motion quilt ANYTHING!

Skating Rink After Compulsory Figures Competition

Figure skaters learn by first etching circles, figure eights, and other patterns onto the ice using a scribe (like a giant compass) and then they practice skating over the etched lines again and again as they developed the gross motor muscle memory for skating these shapes in competition.

Free motion quilting with a long arm machine on a frame has got to be somewhere in between learning to write in cursive and learning figure skating, don't you think?  That's why I'm exploring options for marking some basic free motion designs onto the surface of my quilt.  The idea is that, if I mark and "trace" these designs all over my quilt today, I will develop the muscle memory faster for quilting these shapes in the future without having to mark them at all.

Both of the designs on these DIY stencils shown above were resized and traced from quilting designs that were on the CD that came with Judi Madsen's Quilting Wide Open Spaces book, available on Amazon here.  

The first design I've selected for my Spirit Song quilt is the one that Judi quilted in the white squares below on her Crossroads quilt, the featherlike swirls that radiate around those blocks:

Quilting Detail of Crossroads, by Judi Madsen

I enlarged that design to fit the space on my quilt, and just traced one line for each curl.  Now, this might seem like a silly design to need to mark before quilting, but marking this will help me get consistent spacing and angles for the feather curls as I travel around the block, quilting the design in four different directions, and it should help build muscle memory for all sorts of different feathers in the future.  Training wheels, baby!  By the way, if I was not using a stencil for this design but was nervous about stitching it freehand, I could also draw the feather curl guidelines freehand with a purple or blue erasable fabric marker.  Transferring the lines with a stencil is much faster and will ensure that the feather curls at the bottom of the quilt are consistent with the curls I was making at the top of the quilt.

Enlarged to Fit Here On My Spirit Song Quilt

When I quilt this design, I'll be traveling up each curved line to the swirled tip on one side of the marked line, and then quilting back down on the other side of the line.  After printing the design on my computer at the correct size for my block, I used an ultra fine point Sharpie marker to trace the swirls (along with registration marks) onto translucent 24# vellum that I found squirreled away in my office supplies.  Then I S-L-O-W-L-Y stitched along the lines I'd drawn using an old needle and no thread in my sewing machine.  This is one of those times when speed kills, because the lines that get marked on the quilt are only going to be as accurate as the holes created by your sewing machine needle!  Going around that inner curl was one stitch, pivot, another stitch, pivot, repeat FOREVER...

Making My Vellum Quilting Stencil

So, although I'm happy with my stencil and I think it will work great for me, it is definitely worth shelling out a couple of dollars for a premade stencil if you can find one in the right design and the correct size for your project.  It could take hours to make your own stencil for a really elaborate design.  To make my stencil, I'm using a size 75/11 needle with stitch length 1.5, and I did have to turn off the upper thread break indicator on my Bernina since I'm running the machine without any thread.  (With my first try, I had a beefy size 90/14 jeans needle, but found that to result in a chalk line on my quilt that was thicker than necessary).

Finished!

What's nice about the 24 lb. vellum for making stencils is that it's light enough to stitch through easily, yet sturdy and rigid enough that the holes don't close up as easily as paper when you rub over the stencil with your pounce chalk, and it's not going to tear easily.  And I love that I can see through it, which is crucial for aligning motifs precisely where you want them on your quilt.

Auditioning Quilting Ideas on my iPad

Not sure how well you can see the quilting doodles on the image above.  The blocks with red X's on them are ideas I was trying out that I've decided against, and the blocks outlined in bright yellow are the ideas I'm feeling good about at the moment.  

Can You See It Better Here?

My idea for quilting this is that I want to create the illusion that my quilt is comprised of two alternating blocks set on the diagonal rather than one straight set block, emphasizing the secondary design created where the blocks meet up at the corners.  

This is the 16 inch Block in My Quilt, Made From Four Birds In the Air Blocks

I have a combination of  straight line ruler work and freehand curvy designs in each quilting design, and I've tried to keep the quilting density fairly constant.  The off-white fabrics will be quilted more densely than the blue and peach/pink/corals, making those areas recede visually.  Now, I know I'd get better dimension in the less-quilted areas if I was using a wool or double batting for this piece, but since it's just for practice and I already have enough variables in play, I'm just going with a single layer of Quilter's Dream Cotton Select.  As of right now, I'm planning to use pale peach Superior So Fine 50 weight thread in the needle with 60 weight Bottom Line in the bobbin for all of the peach/pink/coral fabrics, and then switch to an off-white thread for the background fills.  Those little blue triangles are a bit problematic, because they would be easier to quilt without a gazillion thread breaks if I quilted them at the same time as the pink/peach/corals, or at the same time as the off-white background fills.  So, we'll see what happens when I start quilting!

Anyway, today's post about why I'm using stencils and how I made my own is Part One.  In a day or two, I'm hoping to share with you my experiments with using different brands of chalk powder to transfer the DIY stencils to my quilt, a few different kinds of commercially made stencil options, and how to keep the design from smudging or bouncing off the quilt surface before stitching is complete.  That will be Part Two.

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

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

·       Free Motion Mavericks at Quilting & Learning Combo OR at Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing