Machine quilting

I went to my very first quilting class at a local quilt shop. It was an introductory machine quilting class.

Photobucket

and I LOVED it.

I think I’ve been muddling along fairly well with my quilting – certainly, with every new quilt I make, I learn a tonne; but I’m finding that backs of my quilts always have an issue that looks like my tension was off, and no matter what I did , it never changed. In addition, my stitches were always too long.

Our teacher, Carolyn (pictured here)
Photobucket

explained to me that the issue was not tension, but that my feet and my hands were not going at the same speed! She suggested a number of different techniques to correct this including quilting gloves (she gave me a pair to try) but it seemed that the best correction for the problem was information. Once I was aware of what the issue was, I sped up my machine (as counter-intuitive as that was) and slowed down my hands, and it worked! On full size quilts, it’s a little harder to get my hand speed right, but its coming along.

We tried a number of quilting techniques with the walking foot that I wouldn’t have otherwise; for instance, shallow curves:
Photobucket

We also did a number of straight line techniques which I accomplished with varying degrees of success – I’m never very good with straight lines! Since my brain is always off in a hundred places at once, my straight lines, though often “straight” – were almost never parallel. No need to display my blocks of shame however, because we broke for lunch
Photobucket

Beef stew and home-made bread and salad and chocolate cookies!

And then we got to do squiggles!
Photobucket
Unsurprisingly, I was good at squiggles.

I was already familiar with stippling and meandering, but we also worked on outline quilting, Photobucket (only visible if you look really closely at those flowers) and meandering (which means, apparently, that you get to “meander” any place that you want to – I’m going to try that on my next quilt!)

And then we worked with freezer paper. Now I’ve read about this freezer paper trick, but I rather stubbornly thought “regular paper and pins are good enough for me!” But now I am a true convert. Behold the wonders of freezer paper!:

PhotobucketPhotobucket

Look Ma, no pins!

For someone as pin-phobic as I, you’d think I would have cottoned on to this whole freezer paper thing before! After I made this wondrous circle, I filled it in. Although I sewed that circle with a walking foot, I’ve found that in trying it out with a full size quilt – it was extremely difficult to manoeuvre. It may take more practice to manoeuvre with a walking foot - or perhaps there’s another “trick” I don’t know yet.

After discovering the wonders of freezer paper, I did a lot more work with it and experimented in other ways, (feathers and fractured stars and little paper doll girls with afros and clouds in a sunny sky and other things, including sewing OVER the freezer paper to follow a pattern) and it was amazing and wonderful to learn so much!

I'm definitely putting that new found knowledge to use!

Anonymous

2 comments:

  1. I really like that fabric you were using - gorgeous!

    I really need to take a class on machine quilting. I need to get over my fear of it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, thanks! I loved the asian-y feel of it.

    The machine quilting class was really great. I highly recommend it!

    ReplyDelete

So, apparently I'm open for business again. :) Say hi if you like!

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.