Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I did three more practice pieces for the June FMQ Challenge. As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to try doing a zentangles in a single colour thread (Madeira rayon embroidery thread, 40 wt, colour 1001).

I also tried a variegated thread for a zentangle, this time in a black, white and grey King Tut thread (Superior Threads, Egyptian cotton, colour 978).

And finally, I did some more bird feathers, stitching quite closely to get the effect of tight feathers. The thread I used for these feathers was a soft pink, white and blue variegated thread (Superior Threads’ Rainbows trilobal polyester, 40 wt, colour 818). As plenty of pink and grey galahs live in my area, I was trying to emulate their gorgeous colours.

I was much happier with the zentangle I did in the white thread, OK with the black/white/grey one, and very pleased with the pink/white/blue feathers.

Now, back to the quilt I’m making…

This month’s free motion quilting (FMQ) challenge tutorial was from Cindy Needham. I really enjoyed it, and ended up spending HOURS doing some really fine/close stitching as a result. I’m getting better!

Her tutorial started with a basic geometric shape — a 1 inch square — and checkerboarded it with straight stitches (done free motion though, not with feed dogs). My first attempts were about 6 lines per square, but with practice I was able to stitch closer and closer lines until I ended up doing about 12 lines per square.

Next, she got us to practice going diagonally across the 1 inch squares. I found that starting with the centre diagonal and stitching back to the corner was easier to do as I had more control over the ‘straightness’ of the lines. If I stitched from the corner out to the diagonal, the largest diagonal line ended up wonky!

After that, I did some variations on the diagonal, like stitching from different sides to create the illusion of a diamond. Again, all these spaces are 1″ square.

Once I’d done the straight stitching, I moved on to the curves, S-shapes, paisleys, pebbles/bubbles, and feathers. All these pieces were done on an old piece of plain purple cotton, stitched with an Isocord butter yellow thread (40 wt polyester; colour 0640 ‘Parchment’), on my Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen. I’m loving the Isocord thread — it just flows really nicely in my Sweet Sixteen and doesn’t shred or break like some other threads.

The little pebbles on the left below are about 1/8 to 1/4″ wide — they are quite tiny.

After I’d finished the practice pieces, I was a bit over the purple fabric at this stage, so I switched to an even older piece of dark grey fabric (gabardine?). I marked some basic geometric shapes then free-motioned some feathers within those outlines (Isocord ‘Mountain Dew’, 40 wt, polyester, colour 6010). I then completely filled the backgrounds around the marked shapes with a really close cross-hatching (those stitches are less than 1/8″ apart) in a matching ‘Gun metal gray’ embroidery thread (Floriani, 40wt polyester, colour PF487). I really liked that effect — the feathers ‘popped’ nicely. And I particularly liked the effect of the lime green against the dark grey fabric.

I particularly liked my ‘bird feathers’ — I’ve done these before and just love the feel and sway of creating the S-shapes of the feathers coming off the spine. And I particularly liked the effect of Superior Threads’ King Tut variegated thread for these (color 931).

Next were some zentangles. I’ve drawn a few zentangles — mostly on long flights to/from the US! But I’ve never stitched any before. I tried various threads and colours to see how they went.

I wasn’t as pleased with the multi-coloured free-form zentangle — I think it would’ve worked better had I used a single thread colour — perhaps cream or white against the dark grey, or maybe black thread on cream fabric. Next time. The space was 6.5 inches square.

The last zentangle I tried was based on a zentangle I drew when I was flying back from the US in March. Again, this didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. The background colour fabric had a lot to do with it, but also this design just may not play as well when stitched, as versus drawn. Again, it’s inside a 6.5 in square.

Above is the drawing that inspired the stitching of the last one.

As I said earlier, I really enjoyed this tutorial and can see myself doing more of these sorts of designs. Maybe this weekend?? 😉 [I did some more — pictures etc. here: https://sandgroper14.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/2012-fmq-challenge-june-part-2/]

May already! This month’s FMQ tutor is Leah Day. I’ve been following Leah’s Free Motion Quilting Project (365 designs) for some time and have my own library of her designs that I’ve stitched; it’s not complete, but nearly…

Anyhow, I had a few minutes this weekend to try out her designs for the 2012 FMQ Challenge. Both were based on a meander around a wavy line — the first meander was a classic curved one, the second a more boxy design.

I used a spare scrap of off-white batik, some low-loft cotton battting, a contrasting deep purple Isocord 100% polyester thread, and stitched it on my Sweet Sixteen, of course.

Here are my practice pieces:

Personally, I found this one very simple to do, compared to others we’ve done (feathers, marking, in particular). Not that there’s anything wrong with that — it’s just an observation. Besides, it’s always nice to have a variation on a meander/stipple design that breaks it up and adds more interest and texture.

This month’s free motion quilting (FMQ) challenge was a bit different and not what I’d classify as ‘free’ motion quilting, mostly because we had to mark the design. Marking isn’t ‘free’ in my book. That said, it was a different technique and one that I *might* use again in the future if I really needed to replicate a particular design.

It was presented by Don Linn (‘Mr Quilt’; I have one of his books) and involved quite a lot of work in that we had to photocopy (and blow up) a design, trace the design onto tulle using a Sharpie, then use a washable/chalk marker to trace the design onto the fabric before we could start stitching. And of course, because this was a marked design, stitching required back-tracking as these sorts of designs don’t usually give you a stitching order.

Anyhow, it’s done, and I’ve learned a new technique, which is, after all, what this challenge is all about. Will I use the technique again? Perhaps, but not in the immediate future. I was disappointed that the chalk markings weren’t very clear and when I tried a different marking technique, the tip of the marker kept getting caught in the tulle!

The photos below show the original photocopies of two of Don’s designs from one of his books, the tulle tracing, and the finished pieces.

The orange thread was a fluorescent orange Mettler poly sheen thread (col. 1106; 40 wt?); the fluoro lime/yellow was an Isocord thread (col. A2941 [or Fb. 6010?]; also 40 wt, I think). The blue echo stitching in the orange piece was with a 100 wt silk Wonderful thread (col. 716) I got at the quilting workshop in Texas (one of the Vicki Pignatelli thread ranges). No matter what I did, this silk thread shredded and broke quite a bit, so I’d have to play with the tension for it a lot more (and I did play with it a LOT on my Sweet Sixteen) before I used it again. The variegated blue thread I used for the McTavishing around the lime/yellow sample is a Wonderful Tutti Egyptian cotton (col. TU 24).

Of all those threads, I’m very impressed with the Mettler, Isacord and Wonderful Tutti threads. They play nicely with my Sweet Sixteen! (as does Superior Rainbows and King Tut).

Oh, I also used my ‘Line Tamer’ ruler for the long straight lines in the orange piece (available from http://www.fourpawsquilting.com/pages/template.html; suitable for mid-arm and long-arm quilting machines only, not domestic sewing machines).

Well, this was a rushed job! After spending more than half of March in the US, I got home to a new computer, so last weekend was spent installing apps and data (still more to do, but most is now done). Today I should have been in the garden as the weather is so nice for gardening — not too hot, cool breeze, fine. But I knew that it was March 31 and the last day to submit my practice piece for March in the 2012 FMQ Challenge.

So here it is. Very rushed (about 10 minutes total) and just a tiny practice piece. I tried out some of my new Isocord thread (it flows REALLY well in my Sweet Sixteen), and kept the variegated blue from February’s challenge piece in the bobbin. Not ideal, but this WAS a practice piece! The Isocord thread I used was a fluoro lime, so I tried it on a green background and on the last remnant of the blue silky fabric I had from 30+ years ago! I quite like the contrasting effect on the blue.

The March challenge from Ann Fahl involved four designs: a loopy stipple (right), a loopy stipple with stars and hearts (middle), a spiral (left), and a spiral morphing into flowers (on the blue fabric).

Backs:

When I was in the US, I took advantage of our almost on-par dollar and the amazing prices on fabrics and thread that the US has. For example, their batiks are around $9 to $11 a yard, whereas the same batiks in Australia cost between $20 and $28 a metre (close enough to a yard). And then there are the thread prices — again, much cheaper than in Australia, and some types of thread are very hard to get from retail stores in Australia (e.g. Isocord). Of course, when the fabric and threads are on special, that’s an even better deal!

The Quilt Haus in New Braunfels offered all workshop participants 10% off, no matter what we purchased. And at Klassy Katz in Barlow, just north of Memphis, the owner was getting rid of her 500 m Superior Rainbows threads for around $5 each — yes, I took them all! These threads are around $15 a spool in Australia. And I found out that she gave 20% off whatever was remaining to customers who purchased the last yardage on a bolt.

So after I’d off-loaded the Tim Tams, Sue’s quilt and other goodies I’d brought with me, I had room in my luggage for fabric and thread. In fact, I was only 3 kg more in my baggage weight coming home than I was going over, so in hindsight I could’ve bought more 😉

Here are some of the fabrics and threads I bought (I discovered more threads after I’d taken these pictures!), and yes, a purple quilt is in my head!:

My good friend Sue, who lives in San Diego, California, LOVES pink. She’s the classic ‘pink princess’ — her phone is pink, her laptop is pink, she buys pretty much anything I make that’s in pink fabrics.

When I made a pink quilt for my Mum for her 80th birthday, Sue was just a little envious. And she was like one of those “I want! I want!” kids who does a tanty if they don’t get their own way 😉

So, I decided to shut her up and make a pink quilt for her. I actually made the quilt in December 2011, and finished it on 1 January 2012, but I didn’t want to post the pictures etc. until she received it. I’ll be giving it to her when I see her at a conference in Memphis, in March 2012. And this blog post will be ‘live’ about a week later. I gave the quilt to her today — and she burst into tears with emotion… I made her cry 😉

Some information about Sue’s quilt:

• I used up almost my entire stash of pink fabrics! 😉
• I stitched some 130,000 quilting stitches (don’t worry — the machine counts them for me).
• All quilting is free motion and done on my HQ Sweet Sixteen — the only marking I did was for the cat outlines (Sue’s a cat person).
• Each large block contains a cat, echo quilted in a variegated pink rayon thread (Guterman Sulky?).
• The rest of the quilting is one continuous line of hearts and loops, done using a soft pink Robison Anton rayon thread.
• The bobbin thread is a soft pink Deco-Bob thread (I used 2.5 bobbins for the quilting).
• The border quilting is free motion feathers (a la Diane Gaudynski), with a wavy stem — done in a darker pink rayon thread (Floriani), and echo quilted with a deep watermelon coloured thread (Mettler Metrosene).
• The pattern is a variation on ‘Surround’ from Four Paws Quilting.

Sample photos (click on a small photo to see it full size):