Background Quilting

I have been working on my background quilting.  Originally, I had a free motion quilting pattern that looked like flames that I wanted to use, but decided to keep it simple.  I've been having trouble with my tension, and I have to take my machine in for a good cleaning and "oil change."  In the meantime, though, I have registered this quilt to be in a quilt show Sept. 14-15, and I HAVE TO FINISH IT!  I ditched the flames stitching, and made a practice sandwich and tried out some other ideas.  I tried pastel variegated thread.  I like the idea of variegated threads, and I had good success with it in the butterfly quilt.  BUT, not this time.  So, ditch that idea.  I tried stippling.  This is where my tension really screwed up.  Those little turns were not going to work!  SO I resorted to the old "tried and true", but also one of my favorites--- Echoing!  Echoing is so easy, it's very forgiving, and it showcases the objects it surrounds.  It also goes very fast, and I did all the backgrounds of the blocks in a single day!  What's left you ask?  I have to quilt the borders (I might try that flame idea here, there's a lot more room) and I have to put on the binding!  ALMOST DONE!  This has been a a very fun quilt!

I got a little creative in the quilting of the larger objects too.  The Sorting Hat has purple spirals in it (hard to see in the picture, but very pretty). This was a little daring for me, the stitches are meant to SHOW!  It's subtle, but still not a matching color!  Whoo hooo!!   I also used yellow thread to echo the flame of the candle so it would appear to glow.  All the rest of the echoing is done in an off white thread.

The Sorting Hat

Echoing the Backgrounds

Stitch in the Ditch

The quilting stage of the Harry Potter quilt has been underway for a while now, and I am stitching in the ditch around the books and knickknacks.  I am not good at stitching in the ditch!  I'm just not good at staying on the lines! It seems so wobbly to me!  I started out with a neutral colored thread, thinking I could use one thread for the whole job, but I didn't like how that looked.  So I switched to matching thread.  This involves changing threads more often than not.  But it looks better.  There is a learning curve to this and now that I am almost done, I am getting better at it.  I have been ripping out some of the earlier work and redoing it.  Oh, how I hate ripping out free motion quilting stitches!  Most of them are tiny, overlapping and sunk into the batting.  It's a tedious job.  I am looking forward to the easier and more fun part of stippling the background and borders!

Here's one of my re-do's:

The Teacup--"Before"

The Teacup--"After"

   

Lots of Progress

I have been working on my Project of Doom quilt, and I have the Serpent and the Spider incorporated into the borders now, and the borders are attached.  Tomorrow I will make and pin the sandwich!

My spider turned out really well.  It was a lot of work for a mere 8 inches of border, but it was worth it.  Here it is in all it's glory on the top of my bookcase!:

Cute Spider

I'm especially proud since I designed the spider and paper pieces.  The only really tricky part was getting those skinny legs to line up.  Looks easy on paper, but hard to do in the actual sewing of it.

The serpent was also redone (one section) so that it would not appear to be floating in mid border, but actually creeping up the bookcase and peering over the edge.  It almost looks like he'd like to have my spider for lunch!  Here is the revised serpent:

Maybe I should have had its body touch in another place, but it was not fun tearing out a section of the serpent.  I had to redesign the piece, but forgot that I had reduced the image to 80%...  Yep, more tearing out and more work.  So many details, so little brain!  LOL.  Anyway, re-doing one section was enough for me!

<DRUM ROLL> please!  Here is the finished quilt top!  

Harry Potter Quilt

I need to find a good binding color now.  I had planned on using the wood grained fabric but that will blend in with the book case feet on the bottom, so it has to be something different.    I don't want black because it would become too Halloween-ish then.  I will have to try out different samples to see what works best.  Got time for that too, I have to quilt this first, before I bind it.  I am pleased... I LOVE THIS QUILT!  It was so much fun to do, and it turned out really well (in my humble opinion.)

X Marks the Spot Finished

I had to take a break from my very fun Harry Potter quilt to finish the X Marks the Spot quilt which is a wedding present for Joe and Braden this Saturday!  Talk about cutting it close!  But I finished quilting it, and the binding went on like a charm, so it's done!  And beautiful!  Here it is:

I did a lot more quilting in the borders, particularly the last border, than I normally do.  I still used matching thread, so I am not quite as confident in my abilities yet.  Getting there though!  Only four fabrics were used in making this quilt, 5 if you count the backing, that is a little unusual for me too.  Still there is a very nice pattern in this simplistic design.  I hope Joe and Braden will like it!

Spider

I wanted to put a spider on top of the bookcase.  I searched high and low for a paper pieced spider.  I did find a tarantula, but it wasn't what I wanted.  The legs were spread out around it, and I need all the legs pointing down, onto the bookcase.  So what's a girl to do?    I designed my OWN spider pattern, and I am in the process of paper piecing it!  Perhaps I made it a little too complicated...  It's VERY  hard to align all these spider legs, they are so skinny!  I have to pin everything about a half inch apart before I sew.  A HAIR OFF and it looks out of whack so fast!  My seam ripper is my new best friend!  Here's a picture of my progress:

I have the body done.  It was 5 main sections, and some of the sections had sections too!  The "eye" section had 4 parts.  YIKES!  These legs though, they're gonna be a real challenge...