My quilting marathon continues! Yesterday and today I've been quilting my Three Peaks quilt. Not very long ago it looked like this...
This quilt has been around a while with no purpose, so it never got beyond the completed quilt top stage. But now I have a baby quilt I want to quilt with a spiral and I've never done it before, so rather than jump in at the deep end and make a total dog's dinner of a quilt I want to give away, I decided to use this quilt as a practice.
I started off by checking out a couple of tutorials here and here. I decided to start off by marking a spiral using a pen that has run out of ink - it works a bit like a hera marker but is more accurate. Then I free motion quilted the first few rounds. I then changed to a walking foot and continued outwards.
With hindsight I should have free motioned a few more rounds, as it was tough to keep the line smooth for the first part I did with the walking foot. Once I'd got going, I found that setting the machine to needle up when I stopped rather than needle down gave me a smoother line. I used the edge of the presser foot to space the lines and this made for very dense quilting. But I really like that. If I needed a quickler solution I'd use the spacer bars. Also - quilt clockwise. I didn't. And it meant I was shoving the whole quilt through the machine all the time. If I'd quilted clockwise the bulk of the quilt would have been to the left of the needle. You live and learn.
The front of the quilt is fantastic - I love it.
The back of the quilt isn't quite as great.
As I worked outwards the fabric distorted and stretched and ended up with pleats and folds. The fabric hides it well, but next time, I will stop half way and re-baste to try and keep it smoother.
All I need to do now is hope that I bought fabric to bind it.
As I've done something this weekend, I'm going to link up with Sewjo Saturday
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| This shows the colour of the quilt best |
I started off by checking out a couple of tutorials here and here. I decided to start off by marking a spiral using a pen that has run out of ink - it works a bit like a hera marker but is more accurate. Then I free motion quilted the first few rounds. I then changed to a walking foot and continued outwards.
With hindsight I should have free motioned a few more rounds, as it was tough to keep the line smooth for the first part I did with the walking foot. Once I'd got going, I found that setting the machine to needle up when I stopped rather than needle down gave me a smoother line. I used the edge of the presser foot to space the lines and this made for very dense quilting. But I really like that. If I needed a quickler solution I'd use the spacer bars. Also - quilt clockwise. I didn't. And it meant I was shoving the whole quilt through the machine all the time. If I'd quilted clockwise the bulk of the quilt would have been to the left of the needle. You live and learn.
The front of the quilt is fantastic - I love it.
The back of the quilt isn't quite as great.
As I worked outwards the fabric distorted and stretched and ended up with pleats and folds. The fabric hides it well, but next time, I will stop half way and re-baste to try and keep it smoother.
All I need to do now is hope that I bought fabric to bind it.
As I've done something this weekend, I'm going to link up with Sewjo Saturday
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