Just a lot of free motion quilting

I am rather enjoying the Midnight Quilt Show by Angela Walters on YouTube. If you haven't seen it, go to YouTube, search for it and subscribe. It is not meant to be a tutorial, but the pattern for the quilt that she makes while her children are asleep upstairs is available for free through Craftsy. As I write this, I think she has done 6 quilts and I have made two of them.

This is the Laurel Wreath Quilt - which I, for some unknown reason, have been calling the Laurel Leaf Quilt...

Yes, the photo is upside down!

My hubby kindly held the quilt top up so I could take a photo of it - and I did not realize that it was upside down until I got upstairs with the camera. Rather than interrupt him again, I simply turned the photo upside down.

And I also, without thinking, put it on the frame sideways. It was a matter of a few minutes to turn it around so that it was up and down, but I wonder why I have to do these kinds of things first, BEFORE I think... rather than think first and then do the thing correctly in the first place.

The background fabric, by the way, is a Kona Cotton solid, and the colour is Shale. And you need 3 yards of it, and 1 package of charm blocks. I WON a package of charm blocks at my quilt guild a couple of years ago. The miraculous thing is: I even FOUND them.

So I followed the directions for the appliqued bits. There is supposed to be a template with the pattern, but there wasn't, and I just cut them out without even drawing anything on there... So mine look sort of like hearts. Maybe my version of this should be called Sprinkled Hearts! :-) I like that.

I decided that I wanted to be able to see my quilting. There is a lot of negative space on this and I didn't want to cut it up into little squares (although, that would have been neat too!) So I picked a charcoal grey thread to quilt with, and away I went.

The Quilting is just started across the top

Stark!

My first thought was that that dark grey showed every little jiggle and wiggle. Ack! And then I remembered the old saying, "If the quilting isn't looking good, quilt MORE!" So I did. Lots more. I asked my hubby to come and have a look at the quilting so far. I was having some difficulty deciding whether I liked what I had done. So I asked him to rave about it. What he said was, "How come you didn't put MORE things on the background fabric - look at all that blank space you will have to quilt." Since that was the point of the quilt to me, I didn't find that very helpful. However, I wondered what would happen if I played with the lighting a bit.

I turned off the overhead light in the Quilt Studio, and used the sewing machine's light to light the quilting from the side to show off the texture. I felt better after I saw this, and I made it to the corner of the quilt...

Going around the first corner, overhead light on

Man, so stark. Off goes the overhead light again.

Once I turned off the overhead light so that I could not see the details, only the texture, I was okay. The next question on my mind was, what would I do on those little appliqued leaves or hearts or whatever they were. If I used that dark grey thread would they simply be overwhelmed? And what was I going to quilt on there, anyway.

I slept on those two questions. The next day when I got up, I decided I would switch to a lighter thread (not the light grey I have - I didn't want to have to go to extreme lengths to see what I was doing!) So I filled a couple of bobbins with taupe and tried a sort of feather on the open leaves and a small feathery thing on the small closed leaves. And pebbles in the background. Usually I draw my ideas on document protectors with dry erase markers, but this time I just went for it.

I'm not sure whether this was my best choice - because I didn't look at any other options. However, it is what it is.

I think I got things out of order here when I started down this long edge, but I wanted to see what it was going to look like. After I tried it this way, I decided that I needed to finish the quilting on the closed and open leaves, then the centre, then the feathered paisleys (or at least my take on those) around the inside, THEN the feathered paisleys around the outside of the quilt AND then the 5 hundred million little lines between to two layers of inside and outside feathers.

I started on the very middle bit first. And when I was working on it, I realized that the disadvantage with this is that there was no way to see where I was in relation to the top of the quilt. So I unrolled things enough to have a peek. And that is pretty scary too. How easy would it be to get wrinkles and puckers in there?? Holy moly!

Unrolled for a cautious peek!

Everything seemed to be going okay, so I rolled it back up and went back to that outside edge.

It didn't take me too long to decide that I needed to do the appliqued bits before they fell off. (None of them did come completely off, but I had two that were sort of hanging half on and half off...) My friend Irene asked me about those wrinkles... but I have the side tension clips off AND the quilt is partially unrolled.

A frenzy of pebbles and feathers ensued. Our dishwasher broke, and we bought a replacement. While waiting for the installer to come and do the deed, I did billions of circles, and rolled the quilt forwards and backwards a hundred thousand times to reach all the open and closed leaves and I, finally, that evening, finished with the off white thread. (Good thing, as I was also running out of the off white thread.)

Before I finished the whole oval of open and closed leaves, in fact, when I was slightly more than 3/4 of the way around the oval, I couldn't stand the suspense. Would I or would I not have the biggest pucker in the history of quilting, in that spot between where I had started the pebbles and headed clockwise around the oval, and where I would meet that spot again from the other end! I stopped and unrolled the darned thing to look. I'm not sure what I thought I would be able to do if there was a super big pucker, but I am pleased to report that everything was mercifully smooth, and I rolled it back up and carried on.

Next I had another look at that centre bit of feathered paisley. I wasn't sure it was centred or quite big enough... so I added a bit at the top. I didn't want to be doing too much rolling and unrolling while doing a hundred million little lines...

When I was happy with this, I went around the inside of the pebbles with another layer of feathered paisleys. (On the upside, they were sure getting easier!) Practice makes life easier (since it can't actually make things perfect.)

And when I had those done, I bit the bullet and did the hundred million little lines in the centre of the wreath. I would like to make a note here. I can not seem to do these little lines diagonally. They go all wiggly on me. So instead of trying that, I drew a diagonal line from the corner of the quilt towards the centre with a frixion pen - the kind that you iron out the line. I realize that if the quilt freezes (it is 'possible' in Nova Scotia in the winter time that this could happen...) the line will come back, and if it does I'll iron it again. :-) So my lines in the corners go horizontally - make a 90 degree turn and then go vertically.

By the time I took this photo of the centre, I had located my LED flashlight and was lighting the quilt with that. You can see the pebbles, the feathers, the feathered paisleys AND the hundred million little lines in this photo.

 Then I arrived back at the outside of the centre.

This is the left side of the quilt. The feathered paisleys on the inside - closest to the oval are going down or counterclockwise (widdershins!) and the ones on the outside are going up or clockwise. I tried to work them both at the same time at first. I would do a bit of the outside one and then a bit of the inside one, using the lines to connect the inside and the outside so that I didn't have to cut the thread.

But I soon realized that what I really needed to do, was to do all of the inside one, until I met the rest of it on the right hand side of the quilt. And then go around the outside from the right side, until I met up with the end that you can see on the photo above. I also decided that when I got around to the other side on the inside and then back to the bottom edge of the quilt on the outside, I didn't have to wait until everything was done to add the little lines.

So I began to finish things as I went along. This is the right hand side.

At the end of that evening, I was all ready to do the outside of the bottom. For some reason, I began to worry about wrinkles again. I pinned the bottom edge down very thoroughly.

The five hundred million little lines got easier with practice too. (Thank heavens.) There are so many, their very number masks any imperfections.

 

I began to find the little lines to be quite soothing... Until I had some bits that were far apart and I had to roll and unroll through some of those little lines.... however, the distances changed constantly so they soon moved close enough together again that I did not need to do that.

At this point I was getting excited about the prospect of getting the quilt off of the frame, and I did not take any more photos of the process.

Sarah ran over to inspect the quilt once I got it upstairs to take a photo of it. I think it passed the inspection.

So, untrimmed, and not bound (and not rectangular, as it turns out) here it is!

I flung it over the chair, to await a moment the next day to get a little time for the hand trimming. My hubby is getting quite good at hanging onto quilts of various sizes while I trim the edges off of them. Normally I use the border to give myself a hand measuring the edges. No border on this one... So I did my best to straighten it out using the lines on the ruler.  I did cut quite a bit off of the bottom edge (about 1 1/4 inches on one edge, to make a 90 degree angle there and to meet the other edge with a 90 degree angle.) It is fine now, and I could tell with it on the frame that it was not straight... and I allowed for that.

The pattern called for binding with the same colour as the background, but my friend Dawn thought I should use something prettier, so I found a batik in my stash that I liked. I LOVE binding, so that is not a chore.

Sarah decided to help with the binding!

Here is the finished quilt:

The finished size is 54 by 72 inches. My camera is not too happy with all of that grey background and finds it a bit hard to focus on the quilting.

And three close up shots:

All in all, I am really pleased with this quilt. When I took it in to show my 93 year old father this afternoon, he told me he loved it! And he asked me what it was for. That is a hard question. What is a quilt for... Hmmmm.

I told him I had made it because I liked the way it looked. I hadn't made it with any particular use in mind. I just wanted to make it because I like it. He was okay with that.

It was fun to do and I am tickled with the way it turned out.

Yours in quilting
Just Jane

Just More Free Motion Quilting with a Janome 1600P on a 10 foot long Grace Frame

I have a friend who quilts ALL the time. Some years ago, she did a mystery quilt on-line. This must have been at least 5 years ago, and I say this because she gave me the completed quilt top at least four years ago and possibly 5 and she had made it two or three years before that... So AT LEAST 5 years ago.

I gladly accepted it - I had only had the Janome 1600P (aka Big Martha) for a very short time and I was looking for things to practice on.

That being said, this quilt had ALOT of negative space (or plain background!) and I was a bit daunted by the prospect of quilting it.

I put it in my UFO box. Eventually, I put a piece of white, good quality, kona muslin in with it to be the backing. Every once in awhile I would take it out of the box, look at it, wonder WHAT I was going to do with it, and then I would put it back in the box.

This year I made it my mission to complete ALL my UFOs - and by UFOs, I mean, UnFinished Objects, and I limited that definition to all of the completed, but unquilted quilt tops that I had in my UFO box (which turned out, to my chagrin, to actually be TWO rubbermaid containers full of finished quilt tops.) (How embarassing!) (There were 27 quilt tops in there in various sizes.)

They are done now, and I want to talk about Ruth's Mystery Quilt.

Here it is, replete with a photo of my sleeve... Hmm. I'm not sure how that got in there... Anyway, you can see that there is a four patch border around the whole quilt. In the very centre there is a light and dark yellow thing. Can you tell what it is? I'll give you a hint. It says, "Meow!" Yes!! It is a CAT.

Here's the cat on the frame. Can you hear my brain whirring, trying to figure out WHAT I am going to quilt on that??

At this point, you can either see for yourself, or take my word for it... the quilt is not quite symmetrical.  There is A LOT of beige background fabric. Two shades of yellow (or gold, if you prefer), a black fabric with white dragonflies on it, and a solid black fabric (At least I think it is solid...) The irregular 9 patch - Big square in the middle of the block with 4 smaller squares in the black and white fabric in the four corners - is called Puss in the Corner. Which I was delighted to recognize when I finally got ready to quilt it (4 or 5 years after it was given to me! Ack!) There is a block that is a flying bird as well, I have a picture of it quilted, in a sec. I don't know the name of the block, off hand, and I haven't looked it up yet. :-)

There are some plain 6 inch squares and a small number of 6 by 12 inch rectangles in the background fabric.

I decided that I needed to use a thread that I was going to be able to see on every colour - and I went with a grey thread that reminds me of lead pencil doodling! :-)

I started with the border. I have a little pattern that is a feather with 5 or 6 or 7 fronds and an echo that I like, surrounded by bubbles. (I like to think of them as bubbles rather than pebbles, because then when they overlap a little, I can say that bubbles do that! Right?) So that is what I did in the 4 patch border. Because I do not have a long arm - and my mid-arm has 9 inches to the right of the needle, I don't have a lot of forward and backward space. This is not a problem for the borders that go from right to left, but the borders that go from front to back present a bit of a problem. Either the pattern that I choose has to be easy to stop and start, OR I have to take the quilt off and rotate it 90° when I am done the main part, to do the two side borders.

Oh, and this quilt was definitely directional. I wanted that Cat in the centre to be right side up when I got to him! He would be much easier to quilt right way up.

So - the border:

These two pictures are basically the same - just the lighting has been changed. See the little feathers? They go every which way - completely randomly. I didn't pay any attention to where they started, just when I felt like I was ready to start another one. And the bubbles separate them and fill in all the space.

Remember the cat? I decided he needed a mouse or two... Here's one. Can you see it?

He actually shows up a little better after the quilting went in below it. (There is also a butterfly in the quilt. I don't know whether I put a picture of it in here or not.)

Well, that was the easy part. What to do on the rest of the quilt... THAT was the big question. And it came to me. That cat was out in the garden!! Those birds were flying all around him, there was a mouse, and there needed to be a garden path, and lots of flowers.

I decided the four corners, inside the border, needed the garden path.

Diagonal lines are hard, and I don't have the set up to use a ruler, nor do I have any quilting rulers to use... so I just free motioned them. And then I echoed them and made a line of pebbles, and another set of diagonal lines. Swirls and pebbles made the cobble stones, and feathers with pearls finished off the corners.

Here's the before picture for another corner... see what I mean - TONS and TONS of beige fabric just waiting for quilt doodling to happen!!

The Puss in the Corner blocks I decided to do all the same.

 They were oriented in different directions, but they were all this sort of fanned out feather. It was nice to get to each of these - a block where the quilting decision had already been made! :-)

And the birds. This is the first one I did. I can tell that it is, because I decided that I did not like the way the head looked, so EVERY OTHER ONE has a different head. I decided the head was the black fabric, and the body yellow, with the wings and tail the black and white.

I thought the head would look good like that, but I changed it to a hooked spiral which reminded me of a bird's beak and head.

Here is the final bird 'pattern'. All of the rest of the flying birds looked like this.

Each 6 inch square got a different flower. I have a few flowers in my repertoire already, but by the time I got down to the far end of the quilt, I was looking for inspiration. :-)

Here are a few of the flowers I did:

You can see the border moving along in this photo too.

This left me with a few 6 by 12 inch rectangles. Two at the top, two at the bottom and two at each side. The sides and bottom I decided to try a pretty feather that I had seen. I'm not sure I quite achieved the effect that I wanted but I decided that it was good enough. With the two long rectangles on each side I had to roll the quilt forward and backward to reach all the spots. (This is always a bit tricky, because it is easy to get a bit of a pucker, but mostly because I forget that I don't have a long arm and I bounce the machine's throat off of the bar that the quilt is rolled up on... which makes an unpleasant wiggle in the quilting.)

 In the photo just above this text, you can see one vertical feather - and to the left of it, you can see the second rectangle adjacent to the finished one, not yet quilted. (The butterfly ended up at the top of the, as yet in this photo, unquilted rectangle.)

Here is a horizontal feather. By the time I would have gotten to this feather, the feather that I did first would have been rolled onto the take up bar - and I had forgotten that I had not echoed the fronds!! LOL (The quilt is so densely quilted that I don't believe you would EVER notice it if you were looking at the whole thing. I was a bit surprised to discover that I had done them differently, as I write this post!)

The top two rectangles seemed to me to be too good an opportunity to miss. So I decided to write on them, and then I quilted the background of the writing EVEN more densely. (Hard to believe that was even possible!)

 I used one of those frixion pens to print the letters on there. And then I quilted as closely as I could on the ink. Because I was going to densely quilt the background I wasn't very worried about hitting the lines exactly. And in fact, I didn't like the way the 'a' in cats looked, and I just 'fixed' it.

I found it easier for some reason to fill in the background from right to left, instead of from left to right. (The letters were already quilted at that point.)

 Almost done! (Bobbin change!)

 Quilting...

 This went through a LOT of thread!! :-)

 Cats...

 You can see where the backing shows on the take up roll - lots and lots of quilting.

And there are my words.

When I got to the cat, I had another hurdle. What to do there? The cat was very plain and blocky. I resorted to drawing on document protectors with dry erase markers to see if I could come up with an idea. And I decided the cat was not only IN a garden - he was HIDING in a garden...

So I thought about the guy in Rowan and Martin's Laugh In who was always peeking out from between long grass, saying, Very interesting... And I drew this. Notice the second mouse? Unfortunately, when I got going with the quilting that mouse got forgotten.

 I got the eyes, whiskers, nose and mouth on there without too much trouble. And more flowers and fronds. Eventually I went back and added more quilting to his forehead as well.

There is another mouse in there, on the left side of the cat, instead of the right... Can you make him out? And I put more garden path around the outside of the diamond that the cat is sitting in.

When I finished quilting this I was conflicted. I love finishing a quilt, and I was very pleased with the way it came out. But I was sad to be finished; I was having SO MUCH FUN!!!

Here are some photos of the finished quilt.

 On top of my bed, not trimmed or bound.

 Details of the back.

  Details of the back.

  Details of the back.

 I turned this photo upside down, so that you could see the words right way up.

 And the back!

And here it is, all done.

I did offer it back to my friend Ruth, but she tells me it is mine now. I just love it, and I hope you enjoyed seeing the process. Thanks for reading!
Yours in Quilting
Just Jane