I've always been afraid to follow a drawn design on a quilt because the couple times I tried it, it was disastrous! It seemed like it should be easier to sew over a line rather than trying to create a design in your mind while free-motion quilting but I discovered it takes precision sewing and a perfect balance of speed and control to achieve a tidy result.
When Leah Day started the whole-cloth portion of her free-motion quilting quilt-along I knew I should participate! It didn't seem quite so scary to just work on a small sample whole-cloth - it was a practice project with no pressure.
I decided to use a couple of fat quarters from a batik bundle I already had. Transferring Leah's pattern went pretty smoothly - I used my water soluble blue pen and my Mickey Mouse light box to trace it onto the fabric.
The first step after preparing the fabric (ie. washing & starching, tracing the design, and basting the quilt sandwich) was to outline-quilt the design. This was the scary part and didn't go any better than the other times I tried it...at first! Leah makes it look soooo easy! My lines were embarrassingly wiggly and I had a hard time travel stitching - whenever I had to back-track I'd make a second, partially overlapping line! Uggg! I honestly thought after my first session outlining that I wouldn't even bother finishing this whole- cloth!
When I did go back to the project, and decided to grit my teeth and just do it, I actually improved marginally. I gained a bit more control and got my feathers finished and my hearts outlined. The stitches I made were so tiny that I thought I was doing something wrong...but during one of the Question Thursday posts, Leah mentioned that this type of fmq would produce smaller stitches. I also looked at some of the other participant's links and realized I was pretty average for a beginner and not doing too badly.
Next came the micro-stippling and I was a little more confident going into this part of the exercise. While it was more difficult to move the sandwich with this tiny filler, by the time I got to filling in the hearts I was getting much better. In such a small area there isn't a whole lot of choice in terms of design and movement - the brain has to think quickly to squeeze in the stitches! By this point, the motifs were starting to really pop up and look like they'd been trapunto-ed! The micro-stippling didn't take me too long to do and before I knew it, it was time to finish the whole-cloth!
First came a soaking to remove the pen outline (no problems there - the ink is like magic!), dry the quilt, trim, and then bind. I chose another fat quarter to whip up some binding and then machine-stitched it onto the quilt using a blanket stitch on my Horizon (you can see it in the photo above). The beauty of this machine, along with the zillion decorative stitches, is that you can flip any stitch for a mirror-image. So I was able to take stitch 45 and have the needle fall on the left for the small stitch and swing right with the long blanket stitch - it made a quick job of adding the binding. This stitch also completely covers the edge of the binding so there is no ridge and it lies flat.
Now that my whole-cloth is done, I'm actually very proud of it and so happy I finished! From a distance, in low light, it looks BEAUTIFUL! I can't stop looking at it and feeling the puffy motifs! Up close...well, then you can see the thread knots, over-lapping lines, and wiggles. But I did improve and learned so much and am not afraid to try drawing designs on portions of my quilts now! I think my pen line was a little thick and plan on buying the Fine Line Marking Pen from Leah's Quilt Shop...along with some Clover Cheater Needles for hiding the thread tails (I got REALLY good at doing that!!!). Thank you Leah, for getting me over this fear and getting my Heart & Feathers whole-cloth done - I'm really happy with how it turned out!
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