Results may vary

I’m gearing up for major fmq by getting rid of the cobwebs around the hand-eye-sewing machine-fabric coordination. Just stitching samples, four inches squares. Just practice.

Here’re two samples based on an interesting pattern shown on Amy’s Free Motion Quilting Adventures. All straight lines. It’s a stitched version of a Twisted Log Cabin. She has a video showing how she did it.

same pattern, different results

The one on the left was stitched first. No rulers. And other than the perimeter square, no marking – spacing eyeballed. I did turn the square so I am stitching the line straight on from back to front. 

What if I don’t turn it? Thus the second sample on the right. Yeah, I could use more practice stitching in other directions. The lines aren’t as straight, the spacing is uneven, the resulting curve is rougher, and the center is off. 

It’s got wonky charm, doesn't it? 

Gussied up & stepping out!

Plain Jane before:

Plain Jane in 2013

In response to FiberShots Community Challenge: Embellish Your World at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, I gave it a makeover:

Vega Alpha Lyrae

Post transformation, I’ve donated it, as Vega Alpha Lyrae, to the museum. It will be exhibited from March 7 to April 26, 2015 along with many other works to be auctioned off to support their worthwhile efforts.

The museum issues these FiberShots challenges annually. Check them out! Support the museum by starting or adding to your own collection of 16-inch squares. 

Prepared for Pauly

I'm ready with two strip sets for next weekend's workshop.

two strip sets 

Instead of the usual solids, I am using prints in hopes of reducing that print stash. One is a set with five different fabrics. The other is a set with five similar fabrics. Can you tell which is what? Maybe I'm stretching the directions just a little due to limited tolerance for combining prints.

Pat Pauly will teach a two-day Slash and Burn, Techniques for Improvisational Quilts at my guild. This will be the very first workshop I've added as the guild's Program person (I'm now the Program Chair). A two-day workshop is usually a harder sell, but it's full with a waiting list! My critique group will host a dinner for her next Saturday. Maybe she'll share how she does it all - maintains her good humor, her energy and her productivity. Wouldn't you like to know? 

Gobble gobble

Besides the usual squirrels, moles, skunks, raccoons and deer, we have wild turkeys!

Last year a pair were prowling around the hood and were seen hopping off my neighbor's roof. Last week a family of a half dozen congregated around another neighbor's front yard. Guess they're not practicing family planning! This week I captured this one:

turkey on my front fence

They look robust and healthy but I've been advised to avoid these unfriendly creatures.

Pause after battle

taming the bedquilt

Quilting this monster bedquilt was like doing battle: fierce fighting in the middle and a few skirmishes elsewhere.

I'd walking-footed along both sides of major seams and fmq'd in the ditch within each nine-patch triangular block. As Cindy Needham says, stitch E-S-S (every stinking seam).

laid out on my bed for inspection

I've learned . . .

• the open toe walking foot lets me see enough for straighter and truer stitches;

• using the fmq foot is like driving a sports car instead of a moving van; and

• when restarting, take a stitch in place and relax the finger hold so that the first stitch is not tugged awry. 

wool batting puffs up each triangle

Quilting is on pause as I contemplate motifs: may leave the printed triangles as is, and add feathers and swirls in the larger solid areas. 

FMQ inspiration & evolution

Love the patterning on this building spied in an architectural magazine:

rendering of expansion to Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg proposed by Dominique Perrault

Inspired, I stitched these samples as a warm-up for fmq:

pattern evolution from straight lines to s-curves

I find curves much easier than straight lines. Is it that way for you too?