What's the best way to quilt a quilt?
Published: Thu, 08/23/12
Hi ,
What a week! My computer is still broken and my little boy has flown the coop to pre-kindergarten. While I know I'll love having a huge block of time each day to quilt, it was still very sad to watch my little boy ride away on the school bus the first time.
Still, the one thing I've learned about quilting is no matter how bad or sad you feel, sitting down at the machine can usually make you feel better.
This week I plan to finally begin the marking process of The Duchess Reigns. This design has been in progress almost all summer, and it's finally time to pull out the marking pencils and get to work!
But starting this new project is making me feel a little guilty about all the other projects laying around the house unfinished. Have you ever made a list of all your UFOs? I recently went through all my bins and made a list of every single quilt and it was a humbling experience.
So rather than feel bad about it, I've decided to make a change to the project and declare an official UFO day! Sundays will now be the day to pull out one UFO project and give it some attention. To keep on track with this new program, we're also going to link up and share our UFOs and what exactly is the problem or issue stopping them from being finished.
Then on Mondays I'll share some UFO advice, helping to answer your questions and motivate you with a bit of verbal butt-kicking! Looking through the results of the 2012 Free Motion Quilting Survey, it looks like most of you are afraid of quilting your own quilts - afraid of ruining those beautiful quilt tops with imperfect stitches, or afraid of picking the wrong design.
I'm here to tell you - there is no wrong way to quilt a quilt and together hopefully we'll be able to start chipping away at those UFOs and turn them into a closet of full finished, beautiful quilts!
Now speaking of quilting and UFOs, this week I've posted Quilt Along #28 and this tutorial is basically designed to take the fear out of trying new designs.
This tutorial is on Auditioning Designs - take a photo or sketch or diagram of your finished quilt and print it out on plain paper in black and white. Next, play with drawing different designs in different places and see how this changes your quilt.
Learn more by reading the full tutorial right here.
Still, the one thing I've learned about quilting is no matter how bad or sad you feel, sitting down at the machine can usually make you feel better.
This week I plan to finally begin the marking process of The Duchess Reigns. This design has been in progress almost all summer, and it's finally time to pull out the marking pencils and get to work!
But starting this new project is making me feel a little guilty about all the other projects laying around the house unfinished. Have you ever made a list of all your UFOs? I recently went through all my bins and made a list of every single quilt and it was a humbling experience.
So rather than feel bad about it, I've decided to make a change to the project and declare an official UFO day! Sundays will now be the day to pull out one UFO project and give it some attention. To keep on track with this new program, we're also going to link up and share our UFOs and what exactly is the problem or issue stopping them from being finished.
Then on Mondays I'll share some UFO advice, helping to answer your questions and motivate you with a bit of verbal butt-kicking! Looking through the results of the 2012 Free Motion Quilting Survey, it looks like most of you are afraid of quilting your own quilts - afraid of ruining those beautiful quilt tops with imperfect stitches, or afraid of picking the wrong design.
I'm here to tell you - there is no wrong way to quilt a quilt and together hopefully we'll be able to start chipping away at those UFOs and turn them into a closet of full finished, beautiful quilts!
Now speaking of quilting and UFOs, this week I've posted Quilt Along #28 and this tutorial is basically designed to take the fear out of trying new designs.This tutorial is on Auditioning Designs - take a photo or sketch or diagram of your finished quilt and print it out on plain paper in black and white. Next, play with drawing different designs in different places and see how this changes your quilt.
Learn more by reading the full tutorial right here.
Yes, this week we don't have a video because my pesky computer is still broke. Hopefully it will be fixed before next week and we can finally get back on track with learning new designs or how to use the many designs we've already learned together.
By the way, have you checked out the pages of all the designs posted to the project?You can find over 365 designs organized by alphabetical order, posted order, design type, texture, and difficulty level right here.
Of course, browsing online is a bit tricky because the photos have to be so small in order for the pages to load quickly. This is why I collected all the designs into a book - 365 Free Motion Quilting Designs - so you can quickly flip through and browse through the many designs on the project.
This book is available in softcover edition, but unfortunately it's quite expensive to print a 252 page book in full color. The retail cost of this book is $55, but thanks to teaming up with Amazon.com, it's often discounted down to $39.60.Please keep in mind that I have no control over this discount system. Amazon lists the book and sets the discounts so if you see the book at full price, you might want to wait until it's discounted again.
Find this book right here on Amazon.com.
Also make sure to select free super saver shipping so you save on shipping the book as well. Every little bit helps!
Now that's it for this week. I'm heading downstairs to get started marking The Duchess Reigns, but also take a look at my UFO stack and decide which quilt will get a bit of work this week. Always remember that you can accomplish a lot, even if you only have 15 minutes!
Let's go quilt,
Leah Day