Keeping Busy

I've been working on the Halo Medallion, and also taking a Craftsy class to force me to practice. The medallion quilt is here, and I'm on the round of floating stars. They are 4" with 18 pieces in each one. Cute, but 32 of them is hard on someone who is not crazy about repetition! Indoor lighting for this one. The background is much lighter in real life.

 The Craftsy online class is about mixing motifs to make an interesting all-over pattern. I threw some junk fabric on the longarm which is why this is hard to see. So if you cannot see it -- take my word for it -- I need a lot of practice!

Still Practicing

Here is the full panel that I've been practicing on. Besides being a good way to play with my HQ Avante, it is rather cute. It will likely go on the back of a door as I can't think of anything else to do with it! It needs a few more stitches and maybe that ribbon will stay and I'll add a few buttons besides those printed into the design.

Practice, practice, practice

Matt Sparrow, the man-quilter, says he practiced 10,000 hours on his longarm machine before hanging out his shingle. I might not live that long, but am learning the value of practice. For me, the best way is to use a panel. Then if I mess it up it is not a huge waste of time and money like it would be if using a pieced top... but it is also useful when finished, unlike using a big hunk of fabric with no plan for it other than scribbling stitches.

This is the current practice panel. I wanted to use contrasting thread because it is easy to see. However, it doesn't show up much on the lighter areas, so I did lots of texture stitching in those. This has helped with confidence to do the fancy quilting I want for Cobblestone Lane. I'm particularly happy with the zig-zag as I did that freehand. It has a few squiggles, but far less than the last time I tried it. One key: stop telling myself that I can't do this and just do it.

Finished

A couple years ago I took two classes from Claudia Pfeil. In one, she showed us how to use commercial stencils to make up our own design to quilt on a whole cloth. The piece is about 40" square and it sat, and sat, and sat. I started to think those blue markings would never come out, so finally loaded it on my longarm and quilted it.

I

I'm not crazy about the results, so I named it Learning-01 and put it on the black and glass table in our dining room... where it looks pretty, if you don't look too close. The close-up shows the craziness of lighting. This table topper is WHITE, not even the slightest bit creamy. Oh well, the good news is that there is not a trace of blue anywhere! (Oh, and I learned a lot about what does not work, where I need more practice, and oh joy, it is finished.)