Good morning, Quilters! As many of you know, I'm still working hard to improve my free-motion quilting, and it's coming along, too. But I still enjoy the quiet rhythm of hand-quilting, also. It does take time, but it's enjoyable time.
Christmas Star Medallion
I finally finished the hand quilting on this quilt, Christmas Star Medallion, on Sunday, while watching the heartbreak of the Carolina Panthers losing to the Atlanta Falcons in the last 10 seconds of the game. Sigh...there's always next year.
Quiltmaker Magazine featured a version of my design for this quilt waaaaay back in the March/April 2012, Issue #132. Yep, that's how long I've been working on it.
It's a foggy, wet, day outside here in North Carolina. Not too good for outdoor photography, but I tried, anyway. Here's a close up of one of the sunflowers I hand quilted.
I did a curvy vine all the way around the outside border. This was fun to stitch.
Log Cabin Pumpkins
Now, on to the free-motion quilting. Above is a photo of the Log Cabin Pumpkins by Suzanne's Art House that I've been working on at my quilt group. Last night I started on the quilting for this.
Since I've been working on improving my free motion quilting skills, I've discovered Leah Day's blog, It's called The Free Motion Quilting Project . She is a fantastic free-motion quilter who inspires confidence that you can successfully free motion quilt on a domestic machine. She recently had an article in Quilter's Newsletter's August/September 2012 issue that had some great tips.
I tried one of her ideas from the article; I left the feed-dogs up and changed my stitch length to zero. After practicing for a while, I stitched this new swirly ribbon design onto my quilt top. Using this new method really seemed to help with control, stitch length, and tension. I had absolutely NO tension issues - very unusual for me. I completed about 2/3 of the quilting on this table runner last evening. I like the swirls - they're quite Halloween-y! They remind me of curling smoke, ghosts, and even pumpkin vines.
Until next time...please visit the Curlicue Creations Shop...and have a super day!
Get Creative!
Jennifer Schifano Thomas
I love those swirls!
ReplyDeleteVery nice hand quilting! I've always liked how well you can see the amount of work that has gone into hand quilting when you look at the back of the quilt. The pattern of the hand quilting is so much more visible!
ReplyDeleteGreat job with FMQ.
ReplyDeleteSewCalGal
www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com