Saturday, November 03, 2018

One way to audition motifs for quilting


Having done my last customer quilt for the year I’ve decided to look for ways I can make my long arm quilting more streamlined, find and practice more motifs and also experiment with ways to successfully roll a quilt back and forth without distorting the backing or blocks.

I contemplated doing another online course but when I checked these out I found that apart from stitching on another background or panel, the motifs all stay similar to those I’ve already done and that defeats the purpose.  I did however have many other areas I’d like to improve on and one was finding the perfect way to audition motifs, not only in a block but also overall the whole quilt.

In the past I would take a photo of the quilt, print this out and do my overall planning on a plastic sheet covering my picture.


This worked okay and I even did more detailed sketches in the different blocks


However these were not up to scale and what may look extremely busy with the thick felt tip pen on plastic becomes a scarce pattern on a quilt or in a large block and I wanted get a better idea of the real scale before starting.

So off to trusty old You Tube and Google and I found a site called Forever Quilting by Dorie Hruska with heaps of videos too….. just what I needed at the right time.  After watching some of her videos leaving comments (questions) which she promptly answered I even ordered her book Making Connections as finding a smooth quilt path moving from one block/area to another is also one of the things I still struggle with.

So making more auditioning sheets was step one.  I used lamination pouches without any paper in between and edged these with painters tape to prevent my pen markings to go onto the fabric.

This allows me to lay the plastic on top of the block on the frame and mark my pattern on scale.

Furthermore I can also mark a quilt path on these to successfully transition from one area to another without having to go over a previous line too many times.

Now there are other ways, I am sure, but for now this is what I will experiment with to see how it works for me.

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