Ongoing Quilt Projects, Continued from the "No Appreciation...." Thread

[speckledhen]

I honestly think its beautiful.

ETA.... I love Angela Walters midnight quilt show.

Thanks so much! I love all her programs! I like Leah Day's tutorials, too, but I think some of her styles are just not me at all and some of her stuff is too intensely quilted for my taste, but she's a great teacher. I have learned a lot of techniques from her, like her dewdrop motif, which is like a small paisley but where they are not close together. This is the dewdrop I've used on quilts:

It amazes me how many pricey machines these ladies have, but then, this is their business, so...

 

[21hens-incharge]

I looked up some of the machines I have seen them using.
Holy Hanna they are high dollar for my budget.

I have been following along here and still watching a ton of videos on making quilt tops.

Still have a couple things around the house to get done before I can focus on my first quilt.

I started painting the whole inside of the house and must finish before family comes to visit.
so sick of it.

I am learning a lot both here and from all the online videos.

Oh and yes 2 of my fabrics were way to directional to work in most quilts. I will use them for a strip quilt and in the signature quilt.
Bummer there but hey I learned something.

 

[jeria]

That's a great idea. I can't "imagine" things, I have to see them. Especially proportions. I would never be able to (properly) decide the scale of any design without seeing it. I think that was part of the problem with the quilt I started. I decided I didn't like what I was doing which made me even less motivated to persist with the other issues (the bulk of it, the difficulty of getting the needle through all of those layers and keeping the stitches even to my ridiculously high standard, etc).

I learned about doing that from someone else. I used it a lot with clients to show them what I was thinking.

 

[jeria]

Still have a couple things around the house to get done before I can focus on my first quilt.

I started painting the whole inside of the house and must finish before family comes to visit.
so sick of it.

I am learning a lot both here and from all the online videos.

Oh and yes 2 of my fabrics were way to directional to work in most quilts. I will use them for a strip quilt and in the signature quilt.
Bummer there but hey I learned something.[/QUOTE]

I have a lot more to do on my house also. I rarely use directional fabrics as they are too hard unless it's a pattern that doesn't matter if they are all the same. I need to replace the tension spring on my 1948 Singer, have to convince it to come apart.

 

[User395221]

you'd never see a boo-boo in the middle of all that!

I don't think anyone who doesn't sew would notice any irregularities and who could be bothered poring all over a quilt-top looking for "mistakes"? They aren't mistakes anyway, they are artistic decisions. A geometric design might not "hide" irregularities and somebody could notice a wonky line, but the beauty of these flowing designs is that there's no "right" and "wrong" about it.
Go for it!

 

[jeria]

The Amish always put in a mistake intentionally in their quilts as the belief that they can never be perfect

 

[speckledhen]

I don't think anyone who doesn't sew would notice any irregularities and who could be bothered poring all over a quilt-top looking for "mistakes"? They aren't mistakes anyway, they are artistic decisions. A geometric design might not "hide" irregularities and somebody could notice a wonky line, but the beauty of these flowing designs is that there's no "right" and "wrong" about it.
Go for it!

I'm gonna go for it! LOL

The Amish always put in a mistake intentionally in their quilts as the belief that they can never be perfect

I don't have to "put" a mistake in my quilts. They're there by default. The difference in the Amish and me is they have more than one woman hand quilting those big masterpieces as a rule. It's just me all by my lonesome.

I hand quilted this winter quilt for my friend, Ellie. Since the backing was flannel with a sort of holly-looking flourish design, I made a special holly leaf stencil and traced around it all over the quilt to make holly leaves to quilt by hand. Her long time friend who lives in her house, shares expenses on the homestead and also quilts, though she usually ties hers, said, "She quilted holly leaves all over the quilt for you-even I wouldn't do that!". LOL
I had to buy most of the fabrics for this since I never keep reds and rarely greens of this shade, either. She gave me a gift card for Thousands of Bolts to shop for the fabrics for this quilt.

 

[fisherlady]

Did some more. Done for the day. I can see how doing this in a large motif would fill a quilt fairly quickly.
View attachment 1297789

That makes a beautiful pattern!

I LOVE feathers!!!! I have taken class after class with big shot teachers @ machine quilting showcase when it was here in KC metro. Irena Bluhm has some really neat books--one of my favs is funky feathers. Speckledhen, you might have fun with that one for some ideas. Remember free motion quilting is your interpretation so no one can ever say you did it wrong. You can even make fun pointy feathers, lots of chicken feathers are pointy. Just make sure you do the same "mistake" numerous times in the quilt, no one will ever know. Ripping is horrible, so tedious and not fun at all. I want to draw out a quilting pattern from the feathers on one of my Easter Eggers. She has beautiful feathers all in shades of gray.

I love your advice to repeat a mistake a few times so it becomes part of the pattern! LOL

 

[speckledhen]

I love your advice to repeat a mistake a few times so it becomes part of the pattern! LOL

That is excellent advice! Angela Walters says that often. She says absolutely do not stop when you think you've made a misstep, just keep going and get back on track and echo, echo, echo. I'm learning so much from the YouTube teachers as well as the lovely ladies here who have been machine quilting far longer than I!

I may not be able to wait for the SewSlip to start this quilting. It says it was in transit to the carrier three, no four, days ago, no other updates. Ticks me off when it just quits tracking and you have to guess what's going on with it. Coming USPS, too, supposedly. Maybe someone just didn't scan it. That's happened on occasion. I've never had one before so I could go ahead and start. Bad weather coming in tonight, chickens are in the barn, such a damp chill in the air that I don't leave it open because of all the ancient, arthritic hens in there when the air feels this way.

 

[21hens-incharge]

Soooooooo can you nice people point me in a good direction?

Wondering which weight cotton thread for machine quilting and which for hand quilting......

If you have a favorite place to find said threads at a reasonable cost I sure could use that info too.