Sunday, July 28, 2019

Almost twin quilts – The first one


I got two almost identical quilts made from kits by a mom for her 2 daughters and having played around with marking a motif on a quilt with the blue pen, I opted to get some more practice in with this technique.

What I didn’t think of was that marking ONE test block might seem easy but marking 48 blocks (one quilt only) on a large piece of cloth, sliding every which way, was a totally different ball game.  I moved the light table deeper onto the dining room table to try to prevent the sliding which meant leaning forward to mark the motifs….. my glutes complained all the way.

On some of the heavier coloured squares, I also found it almost impossible to mark, neither my blue pen nor the white chalk marker showed up properly.  Thought I’d take a photo to show how feint the image showed up and guess what?  With the flash of the camera, it stood out like nothing before.  If only I had enough hands to control the sliding fabric, trace with the pen while looking through the camera, this might be easier.

For a moment there I thought of giving up but persevered.  Started the quilting, which goes much slower and the usual free motion quilting but as I almost completed the first row, I took another picture and decided to stick it out.  Even though I missed my marked line while stitching and had to unpick more than once, this could turn our very nice.

There can be nothing as depressing when you are having fun, advance a quilt and see a mess on the back and this is what I saw midway through this quilt.  Luckily I immediately knew why the problem arose as I saw thread loops on the top, saw that my thread jumped out of one guide, fixed the loops on top, not thinking then that what happens on top, will happen on the back too.  So more unpicking awaited me.

Once done with the top and bottom border and the inner of the quilt and before turning it on the frame to do the sides, I roll it off the frame and inspect the back for any missed problem areas.  Apart from the two blocks that I need to unpick and redo, I couldn’t find anything else.

With the quilt turned I did the side borders and this one is done, on to the second one, repeating it all over again!



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