Hawk Studios

Quilting Progress - Slow but Steady...

Stardate 2016.159.01

Gosh, things have been busy lately.  Between trying to plant the garden, hail storms, rainy weekend weather, and other general life challenges, I haven’t been doing as much quilting as I would like.  Things slowed down (somewhat) over the Memorial Day weekend and so I was able to spend some time sandwiching a quilt and now I’ve begun the quilting process. 

All pinned together and ready to get quilted.  Yep, I use straight pins to hold the quilt together and no spray basting.  In fact, I don't baste at all.  Never have liked it and just didn't get used to it...

I like the actual quilting – it’s fun, albeit challenging at times to try to figure out what you want to do, get the machine tension correct, and keep your free motion in good motion so stitches are similar in size.  A lot to juggle, but that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? 

Here’s the progress so far on the quilt my sister and I are working on for our niece.  My sister left the quilting part up to me (no pressure there!), so here’s where I’m taking it so far. 

Let me just say, white stitching on white fabric is hard to photograph in artificial lighting.  The lighting doesn’t really do the stitching justice, but you can at least get the idea. 

As I remembered a conversation my sister and I had about what would happen if our niece decided to take the quilt with her as she went off to college, and so I decided I would personalize the quilt in a subtle, but hopefully effective way.

Can you see her name in the quilting?  I had fun designing and quilting this.  May be hard to see, but it's a pale green thread. The other thread, for the rest of the quilting, is white.

I had seen this type of quilting done as I cruised other blogs – Devoted Quilter (Leanne) calls the type of quilting “flow quilting” and I’ve also heard of it referred to as “graffiti quilting”.  I saw another blog which talked about quilting around words to get the words to stand out in a quilt.  I’d swear it was Studio Dragonfly, but my brain escapes me now.  At any rate, I put those two pieces of the puzzle together and quilted our niece’s name in the quilt using a light green colored thread.  Then, I finished out that row of quilting with white graffiti or flow quilting, in part because I felt then the Dresden plates would carry their own weight and the quilting would secure all of the open-pressed seams – make that area stronger.

So, now, I’m working my way through other parts of the quilt, and I’ve learned a few things so far:

1. ·       Straight lines are just tricky on a sit-down machine, but with continued work on mastering that skill, the lines will get better.
2. ·         Graffiti or flow quilting is fun!  It’s very free-form and who cares if you change things up – that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
3. ·         With straight lines, slow and steady wins the race.  If you go too fast, you can get off track real fast and spend more time ripping out stitching than actually sewing.  Keep calm and stitch on. 

     And, just for fun, here's another quilt I've started on (ha!  started a good year ago) ...but more on that next time.  Have fun in your quilting adventures! 

Linking up with Let's Bee Social! @ Sew Fresh Quilts...