Spirit Song Ruler Work and Free Motion Fills

And the beat goes on...  Here's what I accomplished in my studio after dinner last night:

Quilting Progress as of Last Night

I'm feeling a little better about it than I was a few days ago.  As you can see in the photo above, I decided to fill in every other rectangle in that "piano keys" design with bacd-and-forth scribbles.  That makes my diagonally oriented quilting design stand out more, like I wanted, and I'm also finding that I like the way the 50 weight So Fine thread looks better when the quilting stitches are denser rather than spaced farther apart.  The photo below shows that same piano key design before I filled in every other rectangle with the squiggles:

Piano Keys Without Fill Work

I had to rip out those two diagonal lines of stitching that I quilted in the wrong direction a few days ago, and restitched them correctly.  I will be marking those lines in all of the other blocks going forward -- it's a lot faster to draw two quick lines with the marker than it is to rip out two lines of incorrect stitching!  I'm also following Judi Madsen's tip of placing a dot in the rectangles that need a fill, so I don't mess up that pattern as I'm moving around the quilt.

The ruler work with squiggle fills is taking a VERY. LONG. TIME.  But I've discovered that the Quilt Glide feature on my APQS Millennium works really well for the little squiggles.  Love!!  Quilt Glide is a hybrid between stitch regulation mode and manual mode, giving you the best of both worlds -- the machine is speeding up and slowing down as necessary to keep your stitch length nice and even as you move the machine, but the needle keeps cycling up and down when you pause, which gives much smoother operation overall for the little detail quilting.  Kind of like a power mower or a self-propelled vacuum cleaner, the Quilt Glide feature eliminates that little bit of resistance you get with the pure stitch regulated mode every time you pause in your quilting.  

Fixing Diagonals and Adding Scribble Fills

After fixing the incorrect diagonals and filling in the piano key border on the previous day's quilting, I started in on this next section.  Ruler work is marked in blue washout marker and the swirly-cue design is faintly marked in chalk.  

This Section Marked, Ready to Quilt

I quilted the ruler work in that top left triangle first, the coral fabric with yellow lemons, and then I moved to the swirly-cues that i'd marked in white chalk powder.  Those free motion swirls go so much faster than the ruler work, but I like the contrast between strong, straight ruler lines and softer, curvy freehand designs.  Both are needed to get the look I'm after.  I was just surprised to discover how much longer the ruler takes, with all of the starts and stops to reposition the ruler, and the careful backtracking along previously stitched lines.

Curly Lines Completed, Now Ruler Work Quilted Along Blue Washout Guide Lines

I'm almost exclusively using my 6" Pro Lines ruler from Quilter's Groove.  It's just long enough for the lines I'm quilting without being too unwieldy, and those handy, perfectly placed perpendicular and 45 degree angle reference lines make it so much faster and easier to line up correctly each time I reposition the ruler.

This Section Finished (Except for Background Fills to be Stitched in Off White Last)

At this point, I was feeling pretty gleeful.  Doesn't that look CUTE?!  Just like my drawing!  I'm so glad I decided to add the squiggles in my piano key border.  Like all of my free motion work, those squiggles are kind of irregular on close inspection, but I love how they look from a distance.  The goal is to get as close to the straight line boundaries without crossing them,  to keep the turns rounded rather than boxy or pointed, and to maintain a relatively even spacing between the squiggle lines and from one block to the next.  I know these things will improve as I work my way through the quilt.

The View From Below the Frame

At the end of the evening, I had to crawl under the frame and take this picture of the light coming down through the needle holes.  

But, in order to check stitch quality, I had to cover the needle holes with a few sheets of paper to block the light coming through.  I did discover a tension problem where I began quilting:

AAACK!!!  EYELASHES OF DESPAIR!!!

I'm not REALLY in despair, but those stitches will need to come out and be requilted.  What looks like eyelashes on the curves is the top thread being pulled WAY below the quilt surface.  If I left that alone, the thread would be hanging loose on the back of the quilt after the first wash.  More practice, that's all!  I probably should get into the habit of checking the tension every time I start quilting and periodically as I'm working.

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

Anyway, that's what I got done yesterday.  This would be EVEN PRETTIER in gold metallic thread instead of the matte, pale peach So Fine, but then my wobbles and oopses would be more obvious, too.  Metallic thread has its own challenges, too, so I'll save that for another quilt on another day.

I'm linking today's post with:

TUESDAY

·       Let’s Do Some Ruler Work at The Quilt Yarn

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 at Quilting & Learning Combo OR at Lizzie Lenard Vintage Sewing

Stencils for Long Arm Quilting, Part Two: Because There is No Such Thing as Being "Ready"

Transferring my DIY Stencil with Pounce Chalk

After a week of avoidance behavior, I finally started quilting again last night.  Ta da!

Hopefully This is the Ugliest Quilting On This Quilt

This is where I started, with that orange polka dot triangle in the top left.  It took all of the will power I could muster to leave those stitches in the quilt and keep going!

I ran across this quote by British actor Hugh Laurie this morning, and it's EXACTLY what I needed to hear right now.  Well, that quote combined with an amazing AQS video interview of Bethanne Nemesh that I saw the day before.  If you are a quilter, or an artist, or a person who aspires to ever be one of those things, it is totally worth your time to watch it.  Seriously; watch this right now -- I'll wait!

So much good stuff in there about being true to yourself and following your own creative path rather than trying too hard to follow fads, trends, and abide by challenges!  But did you catch what she said about the custom long arm quilting we see winning awards at top shows?  She's right -- almost without exception (and I can't even think of any exceptions, can you?) those are quilters who were long arm quilting professionally as a full-time business at some point in their past.  Bethanne says that, when she was quilting for others, she was longarm quilting for forty hours per week, every week for eleven YEARS in order to develop the skills she has now.  Let's do the math on that:

40 hrs/wk x 52 wks/yr x 11 yrs = 22,880 hours of actual quilting (not just "practicing"), is how long it takes to get good at it!

Assuming that we all acquire skills at a similar rate, if I wanted to be even half as good at long arm quilting as Bethanne Nemesh (and even that is a very lofty goal), I should invest over 11,000 hours actually DOING IT.  Hugh Laurie said, "no one is ever ready to do anything," but Bethanne Nemesh takes that a step further by suggesting that the only way you can GET ready to do something is to start doing it now, BEFORE you're ready!  

With that in mind, back to my Spirit Song quilt.  It took me a long time to mark the first section for quilting, several hours.  Straight lines for ruler work are marked in blue water erasable marker.  Then I used Pounce Chalk to transfer a few of my DIY stencils to my quilt, although I was frustrated that my lines weren't clear until I piled random objects beneath my frame to create a tower with a hard surface to press against just beneath my quilt:

IKEA Cart + Empty Plastic Drawer Bins + Appliqué Press Board = Marking Tower

I found it much easier to mark straight lines as well as stencils with a hard surface beneath my quilt.  Yay!  I might get a second IKEA cart like this one, add a hard plastic mat beneath my long arm frame so the cart slides better over the carpeting, and ask my husband to build me something lightweight that fits over the top of the cart for the additional height so it doesn't knock off the cart as easily as the empty storage drawers do.

Stencil Transferred Beautifully with Hard Surface Beneath Quilt!  Pounce Chalk with DIY Stencil

However, this might not be needed for transferring chalk stencils, after all.  The original white Pounce Chalk has the advantage of being a super safe, easy to remove marking method for quilts that you don't want to wash or wet.  The marks go down quickly with a swipe of the pounce pad, and with something hard beneath the quilt surface, those marks came out clean and clear.  But as soon as I started quilting the ruler work adjacent to the stenciled design, the vibrations from the machine started shaking the chalk dust right off the surface of my quilt!  YIKES!

Chalk Lines Start Blurring as I'm Quilting Ruler Lines Nearby

See how the lines are beginning to blur?  I could still see the design as I was beginning to quilt this motif, but almost all of the chalked lines had disappeared before I was halfway done quilting the design!

Machine Vibration Bounces Chalk Right Off the Quilt Top

And yes, I know that the curls I quilted look pretty wretched, stencil or no stencil.  I can only assure you that they would look even worse if I hadn't given myself guide lines to follow!  

These Chalked Lines Come Off Way Too Easily!

Actually, I can see how much the guide lines helped me by looking at this completed motif that I quilted on that peach triangle.  Look at the photo below -- the left side of that motif, where I started, looks MUCH better than the right side of the motif, because I stitched the center diamond thingy first, then the curls to the left of center, and by the time I was quilting the curls on the right side of the center, my guide lines had all but disappeared.  

See the Difference Between the Left and Right Sides of the Peach Motif? 

Hancy, the manufacturer of Pounce Chalk, recommends setting the marked chalk lines with cheap hair spray or with a fine mist of Mary Ellen's Best Press (using a special aerosol spray bottle, NOT the bottle it comes in).  Jaime Wallen uses cheap Dollar Store hair spray with stencils and Pounce Chalk, too -- he lays the stencil over the quilt, swipes the pounce pad over the stencil to transfer the design, and then gives a quick spritz of hair spray BEFORE removing the stencil so the hair spray adheres to the chalk powder only, with no overspray going onto the quilt fabric.  Ugh...  Y'all, I do not WANT to spray hair spray on my quilt, on my stencils, anywhere near my long arm machine...  I would be willing to try the Mary Ellen's Best Press idea if I was using a washable commercially made stencil, but I can't wash my vellum paper DIY stencils to remove buildup of hairspray or sizing and I don't have one of those aerosol mister bottles anyway.  Ergo, these are some of the things I will try next:

• I purchased a competitor brand of chalk powder, Miracle Chalk, that is advertised as sticking to the quilt surface better without needing anything sprayed onto it.  It's a white powdered chalk that comes with the same kind of fluffy swipe pad delivery system, but whatever doesn't wipe off your quilt with a lint brush or soft rag after quilting is supposed to come out with washing or with steam.  I'll try that and see if I notice any difference.
• Instead of marking multiple chalk stencils ahead of time, I'll wait to mark each stenciled motif until right before I'm ready to stitch it -- and I may be able to use the ruler base on my quilting machine as the hard surface beneath the quilt if I do it that way, too.  
• If I'm still having trouble with the chalk bouncing off my quilt too soon, I suppose I could get one of those aerosol misters to use with Mary Ellen's Best Press.  The Lavender scent of that stuff smells much better than Aquanet...  And I'm pretty sure my not-quite-local LQS sells those aerosol misters, and if I schedule an appointment I could even shop there IN PERSON...
• Absolute worst case scenario, I could probably draw each of these designs onto my quilt freehand with the blue washout marker, but that would take so much more time than the pounce chalk, and I really want to come up with a go-to method of stenciling that will work for more complex designs in the future.

I'm still not sure about my thread choice, by the way.  The matte peach So Fine thread seems a little wimpy, doesn't it?  Should I have stuck with the King Tut 40 weight after all -- or would the sheen of Glide thread have been better?  Here's what the other motif looks like quilted out.  Again, I know this is pretty rough but I'm leaving it in for now.  It's not going to get any better if I don't keep at it, and if I improve enough by the time I get to the bottom of the quilt I can always come back, rip this out, and redo it at the end:

Blech...  Nowhere To Go But UP, right?!  Room for Improvement!

Here's another fun bit to share.  I thought I didn't need to mark those little accent diagonal lines on my actual quilt, I could just add them with my ruler as I went along.  

Can You Even See What I Quilted?

Yeah, no.  It's obvious which way the diagonal lines should go on a complete block, but not on the partial blocks along the edges of the quilt, where I'm starting.  I quilted these lines in the wrong direction last night!!

Yellow Lines Indicate Where Those Quilting Lines SHOULD Have Gone

See what I mean about the wimpy thread, though?  I know I'm quilting mostly on prints right now, but still...  Even on the solid pink fabric, this thread is underwhelming me.  I suppose I could fill in every other one of those piano key rectangles with scribble squiggles or something, but I'm afraid that I can't scribble between the lines.  Also, I'm not going to get a fabulous texture impact from really dense quilting since I'm using a single layer of cotton batting that doesn't have enough loft to really puff up in the less quilted areas.  And yet, the more thread I quilt into this quilt, the more I'll learn from it, right?  We'll see how I feel about it after I rip out those diagonal quilted lines that I put in the wrong direction last night!

Last Peek for This Post

My To-Do for this week is going to be just pressing on with this quilting, slowly but surely...  I'll try to get in at least 30 minutes per day.  Wish me luck!

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

SUNDAY

·       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

·       BOMs Away Katie Mae Quilts  

TUESDAY

·       Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at Clever Chameleon

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

·       Let’s Do Some Ruler Work at The Quilt Yarn