Circular Sewing Attachment

There are days when I feel like I'm running around in circles, but today I was stitching in circles!

This is the Janome circular sewing attachment. It's kinda like a very fancy thumbtack, but much better. It causes the fabric to rotate in a circle as the machine stitches. The pin travels up and down a ruler-like arm to easily make a series of circles around the center of a circle. Snaps right into the bobbin cover area to secure the attachment.

I made this circle sampler of sorts on some natural linen with fusible fleece underneath. I think it's destined to be a wall hanging at Sew Simple. I can see using this attachment to make some nifty contemporary/modern home decor.

I've got a few other ideas to try with it too! Now if I can just keep from getting sucked too far into my newest book, Written in My Own Heart's Blood by Diana Gabaldon. So good. I've given myself permission to read for fun after way too much reading of non-fiction.

Free Motion Monday Quilting Adventure: Grid-based Designs #2

It's week 2 and I'm doing some stitching of grid-based designs and I hope you are too. I started with a picture from a copyright-free Dover book and drew my own version of a floral design on my quilt sandwich.

I simplified the drawing to suit a wholecloth quilt design. Then I stitched the outline of the drawing, and followed up with some tiny McTavishing. Micro-McTavishing? Mini-McTavishing? Anyway, it was fun!

I've gotten better at this fabulous design, I think due to the McTavish-along, which was the first Free Motion Monday Quilting Adventure series. At first glance, you'd think that this was tiny, painstaking work. But since the scale is so small and the thread matches the fabric, it's quite forgiving.

Then it was time to mark the grid and begin my grid-based design. I wanted to do it at a 45 degree angle, so I lined up the 45 degree marking on my stencil (www.quiltingstencils.com) with the straight edge of my fabric and began marking with my disappearing marker.

I was having trouble marking these lines at first and then realized my marker was on its last legs and switched to a new one. It made a big difference! These are half-inch squares and make a great filler design in a checkerboard pattern. I shot another video of my stitching.

I ended up stitching two different grid-based designs, but am only covering this first one here. Speaking of designs, Karin at the Quilt Yarn linked up to last week's post and she had a great resource to share. Charlotte Warr Andersen has a book all about geometric and grid-based designs! (One Line at a Time ) In fact she's got a second book with more designs and her no-mark methods to make them are definitely worth checking out. Bonnie McCaffery has a video interview with her on youtube:

 Marking with stickers and/or tape! Brilliant!

I love the texture of this design and can't wait to fill in around the rest of my flower with more grid-based designs.

Don't forget to comment or link up to this post, if you didn't do so with last week's post, so you can be entered to win two stencils from www.quiltingstencils.com. The lucky winners win be drawn next week.

I love seeing what everyone is doing during these Monday link-ups!

If you've missed any of the Free Motion Monday posts, you can find them on the Free Motion Mondays page.

Here's the guidelines for the link party:

For the linky this week, link up a post of  grid-based designs you've done, if any. If you haven't done any, now's the time to draw some out, start a new practice piece or even try them out on a quilt!

Some quick rules:

• Keep your post relevant to this quilt along please. Spammy posts will be deleted.
• Make sure you link up to the individual post, not your home page as nobody wants to have to search around for the post if they're a little late to the party.
• Reciprocate! Link back to this post somewhere in your post. You've got to dance with the one who took you to the party, so make sure you link back.
• Don't be a wall-flower. (Talking to myself here too. In person I am so stinking shy!) Visit the other links, be sociable, and leave comments.
• Please make sure you leave me a way to contact you if you are a no-reply commenter, especially if you ask a question. 

Don't forget to bookmark this blog, follow, or sign it up in your favorite feed reader. Like the blog's facebook page (I do post some short things on it pretty regularly), or even check out my Pinterest boards.  I'll be visiting you too!

Pumpkin Hexies

I finished up this fall themed table runner yesterday. I love working my free motion quilting magic for this client and her wool applique. She does great work and makes it easy for me to do my thing by having everything nicely stitched, pressed, and ready to go.

The hexagons were stitched with continuous curves using rulers and then everything else was done in a swirly thing around the applique and in the white. Nice thicker cotton batting gave the piece good dimension without being too bulky.

As it happens to us all sometimes, I ran out of thread in my bobbin with just this little bit left!

  Choosing the thread for the green border was the hardest part of this quilt. It's a sort of camo green with black dots. I kept thinking I had found the perfect shade, but no...

That 5000M cone of Isacord looked like just the thing when I bought it. How long until I use that up?! In the closeup below, you can see that the winning color was actually brown!

 Thread colors will fool you on the spool. You've got to lay them across the fabric to see how they'll look.

The backing was a nice flannel. This was a first for me, but it worked out perfectly.

I decided to use white in the bobbin for the white are around the hexies and the fuzz of the flannel really subdues the color difference.

That's my last customer project on hand. Now to choose a new project and the list is insanely long, plus there's my sweet girl dying for mama-made clothes (Will that continue once she start going to public school this fall?) and some samples and things to make for the shop (www.sewsimple.biz). I want to work on a "show quilt"....maybe. But I also want to do something smaller and fun. Hubby said I should sew on something fun and just for myself this past Sunday and I couldn't think of anything. Gotta watch that, I don't want to lose my enjoyment of quilting!

Free Motion Monday Quilting Adventure: Grid-based Designs

It's the start of another month and time for a new free motion quilting design focus and a new give-away!

Last month's design of ruler work was a bit tricky for those who don't have some sort of ruler toe, so this month it is time for grid-based designs, which is something we can all do in one way or another. Some may even want to use a walking foot for the straight line designs, but I encourage you to learn to do the lines in free motion (with or without a ruler) so you don't have to turn your quilt as much.

 What's a grid-based design? One that uses a grid as the underlying structure, or 'bones' of the design. The grid can be the design itself, as in crosshatching (and this is an alternative to using ruler work) or additional lines or curves can be added to create a more intricate design. Some grid-based designs never actually stitch on the marked grid, but use it as reference points.

 Pictured above are my 2 favorite stencils for this: The Stencil Company's SCL-457-10 and SCL-461-00 stencils. Of course, a grid can also be made using a ruler and marking  implement of your choice.

If using a stencil, you can mark with chalk or removable fabric marker of your choice. I prefer using a marker, but on dark fabric, I like chalk (though I could use a white marking pencil/pen).

I learned from Kimmy Brunner in her Craftsy class that I don't have to use the pounce pad to use  Miracle Chalk (disappears with heat), which can lay the chalk on a bit thick. She suggests using a foam paint brush (I used a foam wedge) to apply the chalk.

Here are a few stitched examples I've done in the past. These are very similar to the continuous curves I did last month with the rulers, but these are very tiny and are a good background filler.

These two are done with a 60 degree angled grid with three sets of lines.

Here's the practice piece I made with a variety of lines and fillers including the two grid-based designs on blue, above, from maybe 3 years ago. It was a great way to practice.

 I made a large scale, slightly curved grid to make the design below with variagated thread running in perpendicular lines to fill it in. (The brown is a tree trunk.) It gave the piece some real depth for a landscape effect.

I did a few doodles of grid-based designs too.  There are two fabulous quilters/quilting teachers that make good use of these types of designs: Diane Gaudynski and Cindy Needham. Take a look at their blogs (or books!) to spot some excellent examples of these designs.

The Stencil Company (www.quiltingstencils.com) has generously agreed to supply a give-away of the pair of  stencils shown above to three lucky participants in this month's Free Motion Monday Quilting Adventures.

I'll be doing the give-away a bit differently this month. Anyone who comments or links up on this post or next Monday's post will be entered in the drawing, with the winner's announced on the third Monday, the 16th of June. This will give those who didn't win, and might be waiting for the winners to be announced before buying, a chance to get their own stencils while this series is still active and share with us their own work on these designs. There are 5 Mondays this Month, so there's plenty of time to stitch something with a grid-based design and share it!

I love seeing what everyone is doing during these Monday link-ups!

If you've missed any of the Free Motion Monday posts, you can find them on the Free Motion Mondays page.

Here's the guidelines for the link party:

For the linky this week, link up a post of  grid-based designs you've done, if any. If you haven't done any, now's the time to draw some out, start a new practice piece or even try them out on a quilt!

Some quick rules:

• Keep your post relevant to this quilt along please. Spammy posts will be deleted.
• Make sure you link up to the individual post, not your home page as nobody wants to have to search around for the post if they're a little late to the party.
• Reciprocate! Link back to this post somewhere in your post. You've got to dance with the one who took you to the party, so make sure you link back.
• Don't be a wall-flower. (Talking to myself here too. In person I am so stinking shy!) Visit the other links, be sociable, and leave comments.
• Please make sure you leave me a way to contact you if you are a no-reply commenter, especially if you ask a question. 

Don't forget to bookmark this blog, follow, or sign it up in your favorite feed reader. Like the facebook page (I do post some short things on it pretty regularly), or even check out my Pinterest boards.  I'll be visiting you too!