December 2012 FMQ Border Challenge with Patsy Thompson

December 2012 FMQ Border Challenge Completed (Backing Side)

As you know if you are a frequent visitor, I am scrambling desperately to complete all 12 free-motion quilting challenge exercises of the SewCalGal 2012 FMQ Challenge by the Second Chance deadline of October 31st, 2013.  What's that, six days from today?  Yes, that's how I roll...  For the past few days, I've been working on Patsy Thompson's December 2012 challenge tutorial on border designs.  This is a fat quarter sized practice sample, approximately 18" x 22", and I burned through an entire spool of Mettler 60/2 cotton embroidery thread.  Fortunately, I had almost an exact color match in another brand of 60/2 cotton thread, because I was hell-bent on getting this challenge finished tonight and no one who sells good thread is open for business at 9 PM in Charlotte.

It took me at least an hour just to mark the straight (or straightISH, as it turned out) lines delineating where each pattern would begin and end.  I used an acrylic straight line tool with Velcro grip teeth on the bottom to help me quilt along the straight lines, which took some practice before I got the hang of it.  Then, the quilting of the actual designs -- it was agonizing this time.  From a distance it looks pretty good, but as I was doing the quilting I was very frustrated that I could not get the quilting to come out on the fabric looking as good as it had in my imagination.  The border pattern that I thought would be easiest turned out to be very difficult for me, and nothing was coming out the way I wanted it to.  In all honesty, this probably has a lot to do with the fact that, being down to the wire with this challenge, I skipped the "practice doodling the designs until you are comfortable drawing them" step...  Ahem.

Finished Piece, Right Side Up

The first photo I showed is actually the back of the piece.  Although my orchid purple thread shows up well enough on the blue and purple batik fabric in person, it's really hard to see in pictures. 

Most of the border designs I used on this piece came directly from Patsy's excellent tutorial, but I did mix in a couple of other new designs that I've been wanting to try.  The "Squiggle Square" motif in the outer border was from one of Lori Kennedy's free-motion quilting tutorials over at The Inbox Jaunt.  I also attempted to replicate one of Judi Madsen's quilting motifs that looks like a string of stuffed olives (when she does it) but mine did not turn out so smooth and round.  I'm most pleased by how much straighter I was able to quilt the straight lines in this piece and by the overall balance I achieved by alternating dense/open quilting, curvy/geometric quilting, and the way the center and unquilted strips puff up for relief.  It looks kind of like a museum frame around a painting, doesn't it?

When I pull out the entire year's worth of practice samples, I know I will be amazed by how far my free-motion quilting skills have come, and if I wash this piece the "oopsies" will probably be lost in the puckering and quilty goodness.  Although my feathers are still not as good as I would like them to be, I really loved Patsy's method for marking the spines with a flexible ruler tool, which she demonstrates in this YouTube video:

So now I have completed 11 challenges, and I have one more to go between now and Halloween.  Wish me luck!

Design Wall Monday, Brought to You by Anders!

Anders with his Completed Blocks on the Design Wall

Happy Monday!  It was Lars's turn to paint with Grammy and Anders' turn to spend time in the sewing room with Mom yesterday afternoon.  He completed his 16 Roman Square blocks and I only made him resew one seam.  Now we are having negotiations about what comes next, because originally these were supposed to be "practice" blocks before he started in on the good fabrics he selected for his sampler quilt.  Now he is saying that these cheetah-print blocks are going to be a blanket for snuggling.  I explained that, once he has seamed them together, these 16 blocks (4 1/2" square finished) are only going to be 18" x 18" and that's an awfully small quilt for snuggling unless you are a doll...  And no, it's NOT for anyone's doll -- banish that thought!  I don't have any more of either of these two fabrics, so if he wants this to be a little lap blanket we will need a plan that involves additional coordinating fabric.

Anders Chain Piecing Roman Squares on His Featherweight

The vintage seam guide for his 1951 Singer Featherweight is working very well for him, as you can see.  I used 1/4" graph paper to position the guide on the machine bed before tightening the screw to secure it in place.  I like this adjustable guide so much better than the patchwork feet with an attached guide, because sometimes you need to take that seam allowance a hair larger or smaller in order for your pieced units to finish at the correct size, and there is no way to adjust those guides that are permanently attached to the right toe of the presser foot.  The patchwork feet that come with a sliding adjustable guide bar tend to loosen and move from the machine's vibration during sewing, so those aren't my favorites, either.  With this vintage Singer attachment, you can tighten it down so it's not going ANYWHERE.  Anders is learning to watch that his fabric edge is right up next to the "wall," not looking at his needle, and he's getting very good results this way.

Ta Da!

The other stuff up on the wall is mine -- the Jingle BOM pieced and appliqued blocks, for instance.  No, I haven't finished any other blocks in the past week, but I've been working on fabric selections for the remaining four pieced blocks and I chain stitched the stems on the last two applique blocks.  I've been prepping pieces for the center applique medallion as well, although there are still LOTS of them left to do.  The smaller blocks on Anders' right are my "oops" blocks, slated for FMQ practice, and the paper pieced star on the top right is going to be the center of an Advent table runner, eventually.  I'm linking up to Design Wall Monday over at Patchwork Times -- click on over to see what other quilters are working on this week.

Meanwhile, I have two more free-motion quilting exercises to complete and post about in the next 10 days in order to complete the 2012 Free-Motion Quilting Second Chance Challenge by the October 31st deadline, and I signed on for another machine embroidery blog hop hosted by SewCalGal for the first week in November.  I'm scheduled to post on Wednesday, November 6th, and I have some VERY unique designs to show you.  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

Can you believe it's almost Halloween already?!  Yikes!!  I'm a room parent again this year, which means I need to help coordinate classroom parties in addition to the usual rustling up of pumpkins, costumes, and candy.  I had better get busy!

Enjoy this beautiful Fall weather and have a fantastic day.