Quilting Deep Water on the Loon Lake Quilt

 

 I was stuck on this project the last few weeks, wondering what to do with the underwater blocks.  I concluded that my first choice of water motif (a seaweed-y feathery design) was not going to work so well.   I realized the water surface and sky blocks seem to be to pressed down, not letting the puffy wool batt do it's thing, providing raised areas around the many objects in this quilt.  So I had to re-group and come up with Plan B.

Surfing the web one day, I stumbled across this commercial quilt, and I thought would be a good choice -- easy to do, and reflecting the water reeds and grasses.

 

So I laid out the quilt and took some thrums (leftover strings from weaving that are otherwise too short to keep, but still manage to be useful) and laid them out where I wanted the stitching.  

 

Then I chalked a line next to the strings.  Chalk is the best marking took in this case because it stays on long enough to get the stitching done, and easily brushes off afterwards, leaving no permanent marks.

 

The next task is to stitch on those chalked lines.  

Since these were more or less straight-ish lines with slight curves, I used a regular foot, though I think I would have been happioer with the good ol' free-motion foot. 

Here are some of the results:

 

Nice and open stitching, while allowing the wool batt to do it's thing underneath ...

 

... making it look 3D.

I also finished the gravel at the bottom of the quilt, so hopefully, I'll be able to do the binding during Christmas week!

Looking forward to another finish!

Quilting with Rulers - Egg Carton Sashing

I took a class through Craftsy, outfitted my machine with a special ruler foot, got a few rulers, and tried it out.  It helps that I just happen to have 2 quilts in need of quilting ...

Patsy Thompson offers a review of the class here by Amy Johnson, with a link to sign up, if you're interested.  

It's not hard, if you take your time.  Once you get used to the idea of placing the ruler 1/4 - 1/2 away from where you want the stitching to go, it makes a big difference.  I've been doing free-motion quilting for years, but sometimes you want more precise and straight lines, instead of the "hand-drawn" look.

Here's the egg carton pattern.  I've used this in the past with a template (plastic or cardboard).

 

Inevitably, you run over the edges of the template, and stitch into the substrate by mistake.    That's not a problem with the proper set-up for ruler work.  There are star template rulers for this purpose.

Minimal marking, too!  The only thing I marked was the midpoint of the sashing block(with my new Crayola washable markers, which I tested for washability--so much cheaper than any of the official quilting marking tools).

I stitched in the ditch down one edge of the block (for stability).  Then I ran a curved edge from a corner to the opposite midpoint.  Easy-peasy!
Re-position and repeat until all 4 lines of the block are stitched.
Then I ran down the other long edge (again for stability).

It's a small enough block that I can turn a much smaller section of the quilt (as opposed to the whole thing) to get things lined up properly.

Still need to work out something for the borders, but quite please with the way this turned out!

I love to learn something new. ;-)

I'm including this photo just because I love the way the quilting thread shows up on the fabrics.