Boy is this a happy sight. Zippers off means no more quilting! I'm going to attempt to get it blocked this afternoon, If not today, then tomorrow. As I was finishing up I kept finding more areas to fix or add something to. The unquilted section of the pale stars was way too puffy so I added a couple of arcs bordering the smallest quilted arc. It helps. It's not perfect, but it helps. This would be a good time to answer your burning question: What's up with the squiggle quilting? I have no idea what got into me to do that dense quilting in the pale stars and the orange stars. In fact, it was after doing that I the quilt got taken off the machine and set aside for over a year. The problem is that once I started that I had to continue with it so I added that element in all of the star points. It wouldn't be my choice now but I have a saying that I teach beginner longarmers that applies here. That saying is "Crappy quilting, when consistent, looks good." It's meant to motivate quilters to try a new motif and do it all over a quilt. If you are bad at it just be consistent and it will look intentional and look good. Well, that's what I did in the star points of this quilt. I just continued on with the crappy quilting. It's not that the execution was crappy. How can you screw up scribble after all? It's the idea that was highly questionable. Then I needed to do something with the narrow sashing around the center on-point section. It was way too puffy and wrinkly because all the other quilting had drawn up the quilt so much. I decided on 1/4" lines from each edge. That didn't do it either so I borrowed the hook from the inside of my pebbles and stitched a hook chain on the center of the sashing. Before I added anything else I quickly removed it from the machine, checked the back to make sure I didn't need to repair anything and removed the zippers. It was time to move on! Yesterday I started dyeing the fabrics for the piping and binding. Hopefully I'll have some finishing photos soon. Next on FloMo will be some refreshingly easy veterans quilts. These are quilted 2 at a time and I hope to get the first pair loaded today or tomorrow morning.
Can't wait to see this one in its entirety - I like the little glimpses so much, so I imagine I will really love the whole thing. I pondered how you might go about quilting two quilts at once (and thinking that you definitely are a miracle worker) when it finally dawned on me that the valor quilts are smaller and therefore you can get two on the frame at the same time. Phew - it's hot and all that brain taxing was hard work!! I'm impressed at your avoidance of quilted feathers, which seem to be the holy grail of longarm quilters. Thanks for talking about the work-arounds you came up with to deal with puffiness, etc. If you hadn't clued us into all that, I'd have thought the entire intriguing design sprang from your head fully formed.
Laceflower
8/5/2016 10:35:28 am
Even when the quilting is fun and going well, it's such a relief to have it finished. Making a quilt IS a loooonng process. congrats to the end of THIS stage in its creation. Comments are closed.
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I'm Vicki Welsh and I've been making things as long as I can remember. I used to be a garment maker but transitioned to quilts about 20 years ago. Currently I'm into fabric dyeing, quilting, Zentangle, fabric postcards, fused glass and mosaic. I document my adventures here. Categories
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