Saturday, January 11, 2014

Now for some machine quilting

I finished sewing the binding on the Canada Quilt last night.  Today wasn’t a good day for pictures so I don’t have pictures of the finished piece to share yet. 

So now what?  I am making progress on the string star quilt.  I started quilting the straight lines earlier this week.  Today I decided to take a deep breath and add some free-motion quilting to the large white spaces.

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I usually don’t make quilts with this much blank space to quilt. Using my walking foot for straight lines to emphasize and frame the path of the stars was easy for me to plan.  I am good friends with straight lines!  I thought more straight lines in all that white space might be a bit too much to look at though. 

If the white space had been in the center of the quilt I might have hesitated even more to try the free-motion swirls.  I find I can’t complete FMQ curves properly when I have great large swaths of fabric scrunched up in the machine’s throat space.  As I swoop towards that side of the curve my hand bumps up against the wad of quilt and can’t keep going far enough.  In this case however, the blank spaces are all at the edge of the quilt so I can position it so there isn’t much of it in the way.

There is still a fair bit of white to fill.  I think I will add swaths of large pebbles as well as more swirls, and maybe a few straight lines too.

This quilt was meant as a quick gift but I have to tell you I am really, really going to have trouble giving it away!  It has a specific purpose though, so it will be leaving once it is finished.

8 comments:

  1. Absolutely gorgeous!!! I'm not surprised.

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  2. I like the straight lines and you did great with the swirls. The quilting really sets off the pretty stars!

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  3. You just amaze me! Your quilting is perfect for that quilt, and I love how you put all those bright colors together. The white background makes it all just awsome! ---"Love"

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  4. I know what you mean about quilting in the center and I love what you have done with the straight lines - and dividing the blank space with lines so you can fill in each section. It is looking wonderful!

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  5. That's already a half-quilted top? Did I miss something? Seems everyone is getting so much done already this year and I've read half a book and cut out half a quilt... But it looks gorgeous! I love the swirls (always a sucker for swirls) and the straight lines are a perfect complement. Whoever gets this quilt is one lucky person!

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  6. It seems that I have admired your quilts for years now. Your Canada quilt is beautiful, and the person destined to receive string stars is very lucky indeed.

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  7. Fabulous! What a striking quilt. You should be very pleased with your efforts. Those swirls are great.

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