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Sunday, April 29, 2012

April FMQ Challenge

I thought I might take another stab at this month's FMQ challenge. As May is now looming, I don't think I will. I really appreciated the method shared by Don Linn. I have a message for professional quilters: You can keep your day job. I will pose no challenge to you any time soon. Maybe I'll be able to manage stitch in the ditch with a walking foot. I might become adept enough at meandering that I will dare put it on a quilt. But I will NEVER be able to quilt on a pattern and have it look good. Evidence is presented here:

I squished the two designs to one side thinking that I would fit a third one in the middle. No such luck. OK. I had two shots at it. I used a chalk pencil to transfer the design onto my quilt sandwich. The transfer process went great. I tackled it with great excitement. Oh how quickly my hopes were dashed. When I sewed coming toward myself, as we normally sew, I had no problem following the lines. But, when I changed direction and was sewing away from myself I couldn't see the line. How do other quilters do this? I don't have x-ray vision so I can't see through my machine. I was just guessing where the lines were half the time. I was working on a small piece. I could have turned my work to follow the lines, but that is not how I would do it on a full-sized quilt. That's the point of machine quilting. You do it without turning the quilt all the time.

So I end the April challenge having 'finished' the assignment, but not at all happy with my product. I guess I will be sending some quilt tops off to be quilted by people who know what they are doing.

5 comments:

Vroomans' Quilts said...

Don't beat yourself up - I found this challenge a little off myself. And I turned my sandwich and still couldn't follow the lines. You tried, you challenged yourself, you did finish it. So a gold star.

Rosemary Dickinson said...

You did fine. I think yours looks like mine and I was happy with it! I heard May's tutorial is by Leah Day but I'm not 100% sure about that. Maybe next month will be better for us!

Misha said...

I think you're being too hard on yourself!! Quilting on the line is not easy, and I had some of the same issues. I went ahead and turned my work so I could see better. True, I probably wouldn't do that on a big quilt, but then again I wouldn't do this kind of detailed quilting probably either. If you can't see it, you have to decide whether you're comfortable guessing where to go next, or stop with the needle down and lift the presser foot to peek, or turn it so you can see where you're headed :)

Carolyn said...

Please don't say "never". Your work looks lovely and you "will" get to where you will be proud to put your work onto a quilt!

SewCalGal said...

Hey, you practiced. In a class with Diane Gaudynski she emphasized that it takes 10 repetitions of any design to master it. I'm proud of you for trying this 3 times. I think you did a great job.

SewCalGal
www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com