Wednesday, September 7, 2011

WIP on Wed - Sept 7

Since my last post, I continued to practice my FMQ.  I bought these gardening gloves for $5 which has helped my loops to be more consistently round.  I did try the new "quilting thread" which involved a very complicated set up with straws, wire clothes pins and rubber bands to get the thread to feed right.  Apparently my machine was embarassed and deleted that photo when I wasn't looking b/c it's not on my photo card. 

I've always admired swirls like this.  I never imagined it to be so hard to keep the spacing even.


I saw a quilt years ago where the long-stitch length was variable and reminded me of Morse Code.  I tried some dot-dot-dash.  Next time I'll alternate the pattern more so dashes don't line up (since I wasn't as good at that as I imagined I would be.)
The yellow stitching I did early in this project and was working on filling in with double loops I refer to as "Olives".   And then I ran out of bobbin.  When I returned to stitching, the thread insisted on making giant rat nests on the back.  I re-threaded multiple times, tried different bobbin, tried different thread, dismantled the makeshift thread experiment.  No luck.  When I changed to the walking foot though, the thread seemed to work fine.  So I finished this section with wiggly lines.  And swore off quilting for the rest of the week.


So, I started piecing.  The extra squares we mistakenly cut out for the disappearing 9-patch became this 60x60 quilt top for a Mama's Quilt to go with the baby quilt.

I don't seem to make much progress on shortening my WIP list as I keep adding as much as I finish.  *sigh*

7 comments:

Lucky Duck Dreams said...

Love your machine quilting! Im working on mine too! BTW if we finished all of our WIP I think the world would end or our creativity would die. WIP are the spice of life!

Lynne said...

Ah, adventures in FMQ! I need to make some time for those!

Esther Aliu said...

Love your machine quilting! I know exactly what you mean. I think the morse code idea is a great one, you should really stick at it. The swirls looked fabulous too.

As for WIP lists, they are never ending lists...

Unknown said...

The gardening gloves are brilliant aren't they! The quilting's looking great, keep going

Stray Stitches (Linda G) said...

Your FMQ is wonderful! The garden gloves are a great idea.
The quilt top is beautiful!

Lynette said...

oh, doesn't it just churn your guts inside all up into a knot when the bobbin thread misbehaves that badly?

Btw - thanks for your backbasting tutorials. I tried that out on my Baby Janes for the first time, and I love it !! It really did take a lot of fear out of applique for me.

Kimberlee, The Spunky Diva said...

Your swirls and circles look very nice. Love what your 'extra' blocks turned into. v
~Kimberlee