September FMQ Challenge: Feathered Wreaths in a Drug-Induced Fog

My Feathered Wreaths

Greetings from the Land of Clogged Sinuses, Violent Sneezes, Watery Eyes and Reddened Nostrils!  Sick or not, today was the last day to post my sample for SewCalGal's September Free Motion Quilting Challenge, so I drugged up on Alka Seltzer Plus Cold & Flu meds and faced my fear of feathers!

This month's challenge was brought to us from the amazing quilter Paula Reid.  Paula posted a video clip demonstrating her "fluff and stuff" method for maneuvering quilt bulk on a domestic sewing machine, which I really appreciated.  She also posted a feathered wreath block design courtesy of The Stencil Company for us to practice with this month.  I've never quilted on a marked line before, and I've never quilted any kind of feather before, either, so I spent the last 29 days doing some serious procrastinating.  You would be amazed at all of the "urgent" things I "had" to do before I could think about attempting this challenge...  ;-)

I decided to trace the design onto my fabric with my light box, using four different marking untensils: Disappearing Pink pen, Disappearing Purple Pen, Blue Chalk Pencil, and Pink Chalk Pencil.  The two disappearing pens disappeared as soon as I'd finished marking the designs, so I had to go over them again.  The pink chalk pencil was so faint on my fabric that I could barely make out the lines as I was quilting, but the blue chalk pencil worked fairly well.  My plan is to serge the edges of this sample and toss it in the wash after the markings have sat for a week or so, to see whether any of the markings remain after washing.

Fourth Attempt

I'm quilting with Aurifil 50 weight thread for the first time, and also using my Bernina BSR contraption to ensure a consistent stitch length with the feed dogs down -- and LOVING IT!!  I think the problems I was having with the BSR before were due to high speed on the background fill designs.  The BSR was a lifesaver for following these marked lines, which I quilted much more slowly.  No problems whatsoever.  Quilty Love!  75 Schmetz quilting needle, Hobbs Tuscany silk batting, and I pin-basted. 

The verdict?  Not as bad as I thought!  For the first wreath, I tried to eliminate backtracking the way some others did for this challenge, but I found it very difficult to maintain an even space between individual feathers, so for the other wreaths I backtracked as carefully as I could.  It's not perfect, but it's passable.  When the markings are gone, I think it will look pretty good.  Here's the back side:

Backing Side Up

Fabulous Kaye England Class on Accurate Cutting and Patchwork

Kaye England

Happy Monday, friends!  First of all, I want to send a big thank you out to all of you who voted for my Sugar Shack Leaves quilt in Quilting Gallery's "Fall Glory" themed quilt contest over the weekend.  My quilt was selected as one of the winners, and I won copies of two Quilter's Cookbooks.  Thank you!

Moving right along...  I attended a fantastic class taught by Kaye England on Saturday at my local Bernina dealership.  When I signed up for the class, I had no idea who Kaye was or what the class would be about, but it turned out to be time and money well spent.  I've learned most of what I know about patchwork and quilting from books, magazines, and the Internet, so the whole experience of a room full of quilters learning together was a novelty for me.  Although I didn't expect to know anyone else taking the class, I was pleasantly surprised to see the realtor who helped us find our first home in Charlotte in 1999 AND my very first customer, back from when I first started sewing draperies to justify my expensive sewing habit in 2001.  This is a woman who lost my unlisted phone number and actually went knocking on doors in my neighborhood to find me again the next time she wanted to hire me.  It was so nice that she recognized and remembered me after so many years!  I had no idea either one of these ladies was even a quilter.

But, even without the surprise reunions and hugs, this class was more than worthwhile, and here's why:

1. Kaye showed me a little engraved line on my sewing machine's stitch plate, just in front of the needle, that marks a perfect quarter inch seam for patchwork.  I've had this sewing machine since 2005 and I had NO IDEA that little guide line was there.  This is going to make it a lot easier to get a consistent quarter inch patchwork seam so that all of the pieces fit togethe properly and my blocks finish the correct size.
2. I learned that my rotary cutting tool was skipping because it had a dull, nicked blade, and that the blade was screwed in too tight, causing me lots of unecessary aggravation, difficulty, and wasted time when cutting fabric.  I bought a new blade for about ten dollars, and now my rotary cutter is gliding through fabric as effortlessly as a hot knife goes through butter!
3. I learned -- and this is going to sound blasphemous -- that I can get better results by NOT ironing every seam after the entire block is completed!  Hallelujah! 

The focus of the class was on how to use the special Cut for the Cure rulers that Kaye designed for Nifty Notions (and yes, I did buy the whole set of 'em).  A portion of the proceeds from this line benefits breast cancer research.  My old rulers were a motley assortment of Creative Grid and Omnigrid, and I only had a couple of strip cutters that I was using for everything.  My new rulers have sight lines for aligning my fabric edge on every single line, and I love how the special half square and quarter square triangle rulers eliminate the necessity of cutting multiple strip widths for every block.  My next quilt is going to be a Storm at Sea, and I am going to want every little triangle to have a sharp point and every seam intersection to match up perfectly.  These rulers will make that much easier to accomplish, AND I got a DVD with the set that shows exactly how to use each ruler. 

Anyway, I highly recommend that you take a class with Kaye if you ever have the opportunity to do so.

Next on my sewing agenda: I want to finish up an in-progress window treatment for my laundry room in the next few days that my husband has been nagging me to make for over a year, and then I need to complete Paula Reid's September Free-Motion Quilting Challenge, hosted by SewCalGal, before the end of the month.