Not sure if this was bad design or me nitpicking.

Should I not have designed it with such tiny bits of background showing? And having done that should I have ignore them? It is actually worse than this tiny bit. If you follow down the diagonal going to the front and left, there is an even smaller sliver of background between the brown stem and the leaf. And yes, I have quilted that too. I might be more than a little insane, lols. I am getting so impatient to get rid of that white soluble thread, but it will have to wait until it is completed.

I gave myself a break from the tiny gridwork in the middle and did this much faster fill in the next border. It was positively relaxing after concentrating so hard.

The weather has changed here in the Forest. Suddenly it feels like spring. I go to sleep listening to the sheep with their lambs and wake to the dawn chorus.

Progress update

I would love to say I got loads done but that would be a lie. Having said that I have put in more hours than it looks like.....
I did have an interuption, my husband had eye surgery this week and that went well for him (brave man) but I didn't sleep for more than two and a half hours in an hotel the night before and that has knocked me out until today.
We had a partial eclipse in the UK and Europe today. My photos were not wonderful so I shall not bore you with them.
So I have two and a half rows of the stars stitched.

And I am surprised with how little difference there is between my last blog photo of the back and this one. It should look like so much more with so many hours....

 I could have done something just as effective but so much easier to stitch in tight spaces. Lesson learned.
And just because we feel the spring in the air, some lovely tulips.

Don't you love the jug? A little treasure I got in an antique shop. On the route to not having stuff which is neither useful or loved, I made a pact with myself to throw out vases of the same volume in the cupboard. And I did.

The quilting design process

Someone asked how I do it. So at the risk of asking you to watch paint dry, here is my process.

 I chose the area I wanted to work on, and traced it making sure to reverse the image and leave enough space outside the design area.

 I then went over the tracing with a Sharpie pen.

 Sometimes you get lucky and the very first thing you draw works. I liked this feather.

 But I still had that huge area above it and not enough room for a full flourish.

 This 2nd attempt was not any better.

 So I wondered about using the shape of the flowers as a motif. Nah, don't like that.

This feather in the opposite direction has made me happy. I still haven't decided what I shall do in that square where the bottoms of the flower vases/pots meet. My eraser is my friend. But tomorrow is another day.

Classic Feathers

With a classic spelling mistake on the first one (grin)

Twintrack version 1

another reason to have a practise piece

is to try out new things. I've used something like a longarm technique (I have no idea how they do it) but I liked the effect. I went up the left side first and by the time I got to go down the right it got better.
What I don't like is the time it takes, but I'll do it any way. If it can look this good on precious scraps stitched together, I just know it will be fantastic on the quilt.

One with the quilting finished, one re-started and quilt folding

Finally, it's quilted. I had planned to wash and block it today. When Fliss came home and we had less than 12 hours to get her packed, organise last minute things, have dinner and try and get some sleep etc, we'd left the entire contents of her life in her car. DH unpacked the car and left it all over her room so that needed to be tidied up a bit to find room on the floor. I cleared the area in front of her bed to find I only had about 58" rather than the 60" or so required for the width. So then I had to clear an area in our bedroom by moving the drawing board into Fliss's. By this time I was exhausted so I'll aim to do it tomorrow.



I have 3/8ths of the other quilt's feathers done. On one of the list I'm on, people were talking about basting with water soluble thread. I've tried this before and I can still see where that basting had been, a combination of needle holes and crushed batting. So this time I've done it with the YLI water soluble as it's finer and I can use a smaller needle. I also reduced the tension top and bottom to reduce the crushing of the batting. The basting isn't just wavy, it's totally random. Should work, watch this space.



In the tidying up I moved the quilts I'd lent to a local show. They'd learnt I like the quilts fold into thirds but not the rest of the folding technique.

First and most importantly if quilts must be folded then they must be folded right side out, this means any deep creases are on the back not the front.
Secondly, the first fold or folds (and whether this is one, two, three or more depends on where the most important quilting is) should be parallel to the top and bottom. Then fold in the other direction. This means the first deeper creases have the weight of the quilt working against them to ease them out.
This is what happens to 'When Heide met Sally' when folded with the right side in. I shall have to block and steam it to remove these creases.

'Peace#1' will probably also need re-blocking but at least it's folded correctly now.

They will both have to wait until after I've finished the other quilts.

a little bit more

Thursday was lost in my search for a mattress. Currently I have the worlds most comfortable bed which is a combination of pocket springs and memory foam. My back has never been so good. The downside is not only have I reached the time when I am hot at night but also the memory foam makes me hot in it's own right. I thought latex would be the answer but trying to find one of these to test drive meant a trip into London, or and this seemed the better option a trip to Steph's (she of the cakes) and take my own pillows with me.
So we had lunch, I tested the mattress for about 20 minutes (no heat but too firm for me) and then we hit the shops.
The matress hunt goes on.
A little sewing got done yesterday but DD had friends over and they all went to the pub and then a nightclub and because DD had not remembered her keys, they had to wake me up to let them in at 2.30am. Bless!
I thought I'd try taking photos outside to see if I could get the colour of this quilt as it really is. The first shot shows the progress, the 2nd nearly shows it's true colour but the wind wasn't cooperating.

It doesn't look like much but

it is 6 and a half hours work. and nearly 1,000 yds of thread today and yesterday.

Click to see these larger.

More on the blue and white quilt

Yesterday was quite frustrating, with a lot of unpicking as the horrible black batting had distorted the fabric. I did manage in the end to do the two lower right hand swirls and bury the threads. I put it in in our high pressure shower last night to remove the water soluble thread and hung it up folded into three and hung it in the airing cupboard over night. It was totally dry this morning.
It took all morning just to echo round the outside of the feathers.
Then I changed machines (the little spanner came up letting me know it's time for Aurora 1 to be serviced). And I changed over to the YLI silk thread from the heavier weight embroidery thread I used for the feathers. This involved doing another sample to get the tension right and finally make sure I had the right style of background. I lay this sample on red, green, blue, and yellow trying to get the colour of the fabric right but the camera won't play nicely.
This is the close up, it should come up to fill your screen if you click on it.

All I've managed to get

Not much is it? Just about 2/3 of the feathers. I'm debating soaking it in warm water to dissolve the water soluble thread before I echo round the outside of them, it would give me a cleaner line to follow. The risk is the remaining safety pins could rust. I need to start burying the threads before it becomes a big deal . The true colour of this quilt is the dark colour at the top of the screen. It's clickable (or should be). Thank you to all who emailed (and even rang me up!). I lost a few days to Fliss's washing and her birthday.

And then the fireworks

The back before the fireworks.
My current favourite pen for dark fabrics (though you have to wait a little while for the white to show up). This one disappears by just holding the steam iron above the work. You can also press it out but I don't want to compress my quilting.

And the fireworks. This is straight from Patsy Thompson's DVD but on my feathers. It's harder to keep the central spine clear, but it's worth it for the effect.

And the back after the fireworks. I used black Bottomline in the bobbin.

Yesterday's feathers

These ones are all done in a 6" square.
The first one is couched thread using the Bernina freemotion couching foot.
This one is a pale green YLI Ultrasheen (btw I've heard YLI are discontinuing this thread)

So is this in a variegated version.


And this one has dayglo orange Madeira Polyneon as the feather and red Ultrasheen as the hyperquilting and the two rows of outlining. This one is not a free style Patsy Thompson feather but one I drew onto the fabric and then hyperquilted.
I've fallen in love with the white Clover pens which iron out.
I did a couple more of my own feathers but I'll show you those tomorrow as I'll be spending all day decorating. I might have to watch paint dry but you don't.

And another sample today

Today I did a couple more samples and had a play. I couldn't resist doing a Patsy Thompson feather (they are much quicker to do than my normal ones) This one was done using Madeira Polyneon in a pastel variegated colour. I used a 90 embroidery needle for this thread. The background is the YLI Silk 100# again with a 60 Microtex needle. If you recognise the background as Mc Tavishing, take another look. It gives the same swirly impression but without all that bothersome backtracking.
Then I played with different infills for the grid work on the wholecloth. I tried just doing some basic stippling (too boring), then I tried some mini feathers (and I do mean mini, those diamonds are 1"), they looked good except the spines of the feathers developed a line from one diamond to the next. I quite like the swirls and I like the way the curves alternate directions in the rows, a sort of wave like look.

And I've even managed to fit in some cutting away of the batting time. Still a very long way to go on this..... And I've yet to start on the big sample so I can decide whether the alternate diamonds in the grid shall be padded or not.

It's good to be back at my machine. Like coming home,

Finally some stitching!!

I was so excited and at the same time feeling a little aprehensive as it's so long since I've sat at my machine. I know when I've have large gaps before it's taken a little while to get my 'hand' back in.
I split this sample piece into 4 pieces roughly 11" X 8". Thinking I'd made a few little mini quilts. This is the first piece. I drew the feathers (I use these as guidelines not lines I absolutely HAVE to stitch on).
I should have played with the tension more before I started but I couldn't wait to get going. The top thread is a tiny bit to tense (or the bottom, too loose).

The thread is YLI Silk 100# and I used a Microtex 60.
I can never resist spraying the work wet and watching the ink run. I used two different black pens, isn't it odd how one ran with blue/green colours and the other purple/pink.

This is the back and you can see the silliest beginers error, I hadn't pinned it properly and I have a pleat in the back. DUH?!?