Machine Quilting Practice

When I teach classes in Machine Quilting, I always tell my students that the biggest trick is to Practice, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!!!

After hearing the awarding of the ribbons at our quilt show this past week, I have decided that I have coveted the “Best Machine Quilting” award for too many years and so I am going to try to do something about it this year.

To that end, I came home on Saturday evening and spent about 2 hours watching a DVD that I had purchased and simply playing. It was such fun.

The DVD came from Sharon Schamber’s website and is full of good tips and tricks. I spent the evening with the DVD called “Domestic Basic Freeform Feathers” and I had a great time watching her technique and then trying to replicate it.

To get started, I grabbed a piece of older (not very good) beige fabric and used my fusible batting to make a large sandwich. Then I just started sewing and two hours later, this is what I had.
I am encouraged and excited about continuing to practice!!

A Fun Day Was Had By All

Yesterday, I had the great privilege of teaching a One Day Machine Quilting Class at the Misty Mountain Quilters Guild retreat in Helen, Georgia. I had 15 WONDERFUL students who worked hard and improved greatly by the end of the day. My favorite part of this workshop is when the students bring their un-quilted tops and we talk about how they might quilt them. They stretched my imagination some this time, but as usual, the group came up with excellent ideas. I have asked them to email photos when their quilt is finished….hope they will remember to do it.

The guild has almost 200 members, with 74 being present at the 3 day retreat. As I always expect with quilters, they were warm, hospitable and HAPPY ladies. Thank you for making the day so enjoyable for me!!!

The retreat held a Name Tag Contest with each retreat goer being given a month that they had to represent in their name tag. There were some very imaginative tags, including a 3 dimensional Hot Dog on one for July and a kite shape for March.

Well done ladies!!!

On another note, I had a chance to sew with a Bernina Stitch Regulator and LOVED how it worked. Now I have to start saving my pennies to buy one in 10 or so years!!!

Bye for now.

Machine Quilting – more tips for marking

Today was the day to finish the machine quilting on the collaborate quilt with my Mom.

The next step in quilting was to add some quilting to the inside of the octagonal blocks. I had originally thought I would do some meandering around the flowers, but, with the charity groups encouragement, I decided that it would look better with straight lines echoing the outside shape.

The only problem with these lines is that they would need to be free-motion quilted, and straight lines are notoriously hard to do. SO, I started outwith much trepidation and fear that I would soon be un-quilting large sections.

I decided to use a new “favorite” product to mark the quilting lines. The product is a white marking pen put out by Clover. The pen draws a fine white line on dark fabrics which can be removed simply by ironing the fabric.

The only drawback to the pen is that the line appears as the ink dries…. a few seconds after you draw it. You just have to be patient!!!

Here is the block with the quilting lines drawn on.

A quick hit with the iron removes the lines.

And the block is finished!!!! (In order to see the actual quilting lines, you will need to click on the block to see a larger photo)

I will post the final quilting steps later in the week…..

Quilting Day

I decided to spend much of today working on the machine quilting for the queen size quilt that my Mother and I are doing together.

I knew that I wanted to put some fairly detailed quilting in the large blank spaces, so decided to use Golden Threads Quilting Paper to mark the quilt. If you have never used this product, it is a fine paper that allows you to easily quilt a detailed pattern. This is the process that I use…..