Going in Circles

In November I wrote about getting the Circular Attachement for my Horizon 7700 and the Quilting Arts class I took to learn how to use it...and now...here is my first test piece.  I think it's so beautiful and the attachment is fantastic!  I had no trouble at all attaching it to my machine bed or getting it to sew in perfect circles.  It is even better than the one shown in the class because there is no need to tape it down to hold it in place - it comes with a locking clip and does not budge!

At first, I sewed a couple of circles using a straight stitch and then cut away the excess fabric to make my appliqued rings.  This is where those duck-billed applique scissors came in handy!
They worked very well and protected the background fabric while cutting fairly close to the stitching line.  Once my applique was ready for some embellishing, I returned my fabric to the same spot on the circular attachment and changed to some decorative thread.

As you can see, I sewed down the raw edges of the circles using variegated green thread and beautiful leaf and checker-board stitches.  With the medium weight Pellon stabilizer underneath they stitched out with no problem.

Next, I switched to some pretty blue rayon thread and added the flower stitches to the centre of the circle, just for fun.  I had tried to do a heavier satin stitch (the one that looks like grass) around the middle circle but had some trouble with that one (it didn't move around well and just clumped up in one place...had to rip that out!) so I switched to the curly-cue stitch which looks ok but doesn't really cover the edge very well.  I probably wouldn't use that stitch in the future - and that's exactly why a test piece is nice, to sort out problems and figure out what looks good.

After the blue thread I decided to go really wild and try some metallic thread - even though it can be scary to work with and I've heard horror stories about trying to get a machine to stitch with metallics!  I swapped out my needle to a metallic one and started with the inner circle diamond stitches on the blue background.  Worked great!  I love my Horizon - it handles whatever I ask it to!  Then I added the utility triple stitch around the checker-board circle to give it a bit more definition and coverage  - very pretty!  And finally, I added the gold rope around the whole applique and that's my favourite part!  It stitched out perfectly and looks so rich!  I'm also proud because (using a little trick the instructor reveals) I was able to have the rope line up near perfectly at the end of the circle without messing up the design of the stitch!
I love, love, love the look of this block.  I can imagine a whole quilt wall-hanging made with these blocks (as shown in the class) with alternating black squares (accented with metallic thread? Oh, so pretty!).  I am very pleased with my Circular Attachment and will have a lot of fun with it.  The only thing I did incorrectly was not making sure I attached my fabric right in the middle.  When I trimmed down my block I had to go a bit smaller than intended to keep things centred as I had stitched too close on one side of the background to square it up properly.

I definitely see more use of circles in my future...(I also have the Olfa Rotary Circle Cutter as well which I think could work nicely in a partnership with the attachment!)

Comments

[Patsy Thompson]

Angie,

This is absolutely fabulous!!! I love how this came out and love the intricacy of the stitches. Beautiful job!!