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| My Belated January FMQ Challenge |
A few points of interest for this month's tutorial: Frances quilts without using any frames, hoops, special quilting gloves, or stitch regulators. She suggested using a heavier 40 weight thread for this design with a 90/14 Topstitching needle and a lighter 50 weight thread in the bobbin. When I first watched this tutorial a few months ago, I emailed Frances and asked for more details about how she quilts so successfully without the obnoxious sweaty gloves that everyone else is using -- can you tell I hate wearing gloves?! -- and she wrote back that she rubs a few drops of pure glycerin into the skin of her palms and fingertips to get them just tacky enough to to grip her quilt without needing to wear rubber gloves. I have tried several different brands of gloves that other quilters rave about and have loathed them all, finding them cumbersome, uncomfortable, and sweaty, so I sent my darling husband out to CVS for the glycerin. The people who worked at the drug store were not aware that they stocked it, but Bernie eventually found a little bottle of CVS brand glycerine for a couple of dollars and, for me at least, this magic sticky potion does the trick. I am so grateful to Frances for sharing that trick with me!
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| What I SHOULD have done! |
As for Frances' other suggestions: I don't ever quilt with a hoop (unless it's attached to an embroidery module, heh heh!) so that one was easy. I switched back and forth for this exercise between using my Free Motion foot #24, like what Frances uses, and using my open-toed BSR (Bernina Stitch Regulator) foot. It's good to know that I CAN quilt without stitch regulation if I need to (I didn't use it at all on Lars's Drunken Dragons quilt), but it REALLY is so much easier to learn a new design when I can just focus on "drawing" without having to also think about coordinating the machine speed with the speed of my hands to keep my stitch length even. Also, I paid a lot of money for my fancy gadgetry upgrade, so I might as well use it!
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| Bob the Builder on the Back Side: Different Bobbin Threads |
So, there you have it, Folks! Another FMQ challenge completed. I still have four more months to make up in addition to the new challenges that will be posted in November and in December. I want to thank Frances Moore for sharing this tutorial, and SewCalGal for hosting the whole shebang.
