Breather!

I resumed work on "Sometimes..." this morning, and when I looked up it was 12:30 p.m.  I ate something and went back to work.  When I looked up again, it was after 3 p.m.!

Time for a Breather!

The first few hours were spent attaching the 'snow' to the 'sky' -- for real! -- and preparing the entire thing for quilting.  I decided to pin it as I was concerned that spray baste (my basting "process" of choice) would be a challenge with this heavy fabric.

I chose a batik for the backing -- largely because it was one I'd bought to emulate "snow" and never used.  It occurred to me too, though, that the dense weave of a batik could support the heavy cotton of the top better than an 'ordinary' cotton.

Then came testing re: the quilting.  I wanted to do free-motion, especially for the sky.  I tried it out for a couple of hours...with no luck whatsoever.

Huh?

Well...the colour of thread I had on hand was found on a spool of Superior's "New Brytes" (a line designed in association with Caryl Bryer Fallert Gentry) that I'd received as part of one of the company's "Try Me" specials.  It's a 30-weight polyester.  

I wanted to do free-motion in the sky, a bit more densely than I usually do, following some of the dye patterns.

I put in the recommended needle (100/16).

I cleaned the bobbin case and filled a bobbin with white "Bottom Line" (also from Superior Thread).

I threaded the machine and made a sample and another sample and another sample -- several on each piece of fabric.  They looked reasonably good from the front...

But on the back, the story was quite different:

I put in another new needle, thinking there might have been a 'burr' in the first one.  No difference.

I tried lowering bottom tension. Nope.  Raising bottom tension. Nope.  Lowering top tension. Nope.  Feed dogs up?  Nope.  Feed dogs down?  Nope.

I went on to the Superior website and found that this thread needed a heavier weight in the  bobbin (Bottom Line is very fine).  I switched to the only thing I had on hand in the right colour: "Masterpiece", which is a cotton thread but of the recommended weight.  Some improvement, but not long-lasting.  I continued to end up with this:

Shredded Thread!!

And did I mention that even though the machine 'sounded' fine for the first wee bit while doing this, there would come the moment when it seemed to "choke"?

I gave up.  I think the problem lies not with the needle, thread, fabric or tension settings but with the internal workings of the machine when it tries to do free-motion.  And I have no time to drive an hour to Red Deer on snowy roads of questionable condition to take it in for a "look-see".  (Miss Pfaff doesn't do FMQ well, and I have no motivation to test her in this, so don't suggest it, okay?  😉

So.

I went to Plan B:  I put the feed dogs up, put on my walking foot, kept the "Masterpiece" in the bobbin and the "Brytes" on the top and quilted wavy lines in the sky...

And in the snow.  For the snow, I switched to King Tut in a lovely pale blue variegated thread because those of you who live where there's snow know that it's not all white (grin)...

Then I created the shoreline...the distance and the "island".  I fused it in place and decided -- ENOUGH! for today.   Tomorrow...Sabbath...calls for rest.  Worship.  Peace.  Quiet.  Knitting.  Hand stitch.

The thread-painting of the trees/shore and the figure will have to wait till Monday.

What are you up to this weekend?  I'm linking in to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday, and checking out what my colleagues are doing...

'Bye for now!

Took Longer Than Expected

-- the latest miniature, that is -- due in large part to getting to know the quirks of The Loaner.  I've discovered, however, that J's machine is quite capable of free motion if it likes the combination of threads you've chosen, and if you remember whether or not the feed dogs are up or down when you begin (unlike my Lily, The Loaner gets grumpy if you try to FMQ with them up).

I found the best combination of thread for quilting in this machine was Superior's Bottom Line in the bobbin and King Tut in the top.  Other brands of thread on top were either tolerated (Sulky Blendables) or rejected out of hand -- as demonstrated by breaking over and over and over again (Mettler 60-wt Stick-+Stopfgarn, designed for embroidery, and which I've used very successfully for FM thread "painting" on my own machine).

In addition to working on a borrowed machine, the other thing this mini had going on was some needle-felted acrylic felt for the hills -- with thread painting on top, and a touch of Fabrico (R) marker on the bottom edge to imitate reflections in the water.

Sky, Hills, Slough - detail

Finally, the bovines in this scene clearly reflect my rather 'primitive' style...

Roan - detail

Centre Bovine - detail

May I present the first miniature from my sewdio for 2014?

You Lookin' at US?!

A Miniature Experiment

Earlier this week, I found some wonderful fabric in my stash that I used as leaves-against-sky in this miniature:

"Home Sweet Home" (c) 2013

It's fabric I won several years ago now when "3 Creative Studios" (Sue Bleiweiss. Terri Stegmiller and Vicki Welsh) were in operation.  It was a fabric/embellishment pack, hand-dyed -- I think -- by Terri -- and up till recently, I hadn't done much with it.  Waiting for the right projects to come along, eh?

Today, I used some more of this fabric for another piece, but something quite different.  I had this photo I wanted to translate into a miniature:

I thought about how it would look if I could just place the branches and berries (Mountain Ash, also known as Rowan) against that "leafy sky" fabric.  I began by tracing the outlines of branches, leaves and berries onto plain paper, and copying this out onto water-soluble paper (Paper Solvy by Sulky):

Then I free-motion stitched over my drawing, using threads that would tone in -- green for the leaves, red-orange for the berries, green-brown for the branches.  When finished, I trimmed away the excess paper:

I trimmed the excess batting and backing, and washed the piece gently in cool water (per the manufacturer's instructions.)  I discovered it was tough to get the last of the paper residue out of the areas where the stitching was tiniest.  I used a soft face brush to gently work at these areas, with only partial success.  I decided to go with it anyway:

I ironed the piece, front and back, and then went back into it with fabric paint, water colour pencil (dark brown) and Tsukineko ink to highlight the berries, branches and leaves.

Matted for framing, I call this one "Bounty":

"Bounty" (c) 2013

You knew I'd find a home for that red mat, didn't you?  ;-)

While waiting for the piece to dry, I finished this one:

"Bovine Bliss" (c) 2013

All in all, this makes 5 new pieces finished, and one almost there -- hand stitching started yesterday and should be finished later today.  This meets my goal for pieces to take to show the owner of Different Strokes Gallery (Olds, Alberta) on Wednesday...and clears the way for me to get some knitting done between now and then.

Once I get back from Calgary, it'll be time to finish my piece for the 15 x 15 "Time" challenge, and to make even more miniatures for "Culture Days" at the gallery in Stettler at month end.

Something tells me that September is going to disappear as quickly as did August...

Now whats on (or off) your design wall today?  I'm hoping I can still link up with Nina Marie and the gang for Off the Wall Friday... Grab a cuppa and let's go see who's there!

Quilting Snow

This piece seems to be coming together, and it's growing on me -- so much so that I headed to the sewdio 1/2 hour earlier than usual.  I got into the groove by assembling my fourth "B" block from Easy Street, and then I changed to my walking foot to quilt "Sentinels".

I began with some 'ditching' in the long lines between the strips of 'snow', and then added some gentle curves to denote landscape.  (Original photo inspiration HERE.)

NOTE: the 'blue' fabric is really more grey than blue!

Switching to my free-motion foot but leaving the feed dogs up, I moved to the top of the piece and worked on the sky:

NOTE: The fabric colours are more accurate in this photo!

'Twas my C&G tutor, Linda, who encouraged me to quilt my skies and I have to admit, I rather like it!

In the photo above you'll see I've also stitched on the white strip of snow at the top of the scene; I used my FM foot and feed dogs up; the 'fabric' is really a scrap of white batting I've had for ????  how long?

So here's the piece in its present state, with some rock outcroppings pinned on, awaiting applique.  This will be followed by fence posts, power poles, power lines, bush and grasses, but this is enough for today.  I have some reading to catch up on.  :-)

And I'm linking this to "Off the Wall Friday" over at Nina-Marie's blog.

Surrounded by batting, prepped for more applique

"It's Just a Sample"

I've been working on Activities 4 and 5 of my C&G program (Module 7) this week -- experimenting with stitches for the edges of fused shapes, thinking about thread weight and colour, work by hand or by machine...etc.  Having chosen to go with the second composition, I began to put it together.

First, I fused down the shapes.  Then I began to stitch.  Assignment 4 requires that we use blanket stitch, and that we first explore what our machine can do in this area.  Here's my wee sample from my Husqvarna Lily:

I find I'm partial to the default stitch length (0.4), but slightly larger width -- a 3.0 or 3.5 instead of the default (2.0).

So...then, what colour of thread?  I wanted to keep it subtle, but didn't have enough of the right colour to match the shapes I was going to stitch down (the rectangles -- a turquoise would have matched)...so I went with what I had that matched the background instead: a deep pink Gutermann 100% polyester from my stash (the shops around here sell a lot of Gutermann.  I've been a fan of both Mettler Silk Finish and Sulky (poly, metallic, and "Blendables"), but can't always get them at my LQ Shops.)  The weight isn't marked on the spool, but I think from the look of it, it's 40 or 50 wt.  Here's my sample with satin stitch around the rectangles, FMQ to highlight the leaves on the right, and FMQ leaves in a motif at the bottom.

The next stitch to play with?  Blanket stitch.  First I tried it around the negative bottle shape (left rectangle), again in the Gutermann pink, and it essentially disappeared into the background.  It was also tricky to do a negative shape by machine.  I decided I'd try hand-stitching around the edge of the other bottle:

For this I decided to continue to match the background colour, and found some hand-dyed floss from Gentle Art threads in my stash, in the colour 'Pomegranate', left over from some long-ago project.  I found this worked quite nicely to give it definition without being 'in your face', so to speak.  

Next, the quilting.  At first I was loathe to do much -- afraid of detracting from the motifs.  I began, however, with free-motion in curvy lines to echo the leaves on the right border.  Getting into the process, I hit on the idea to use the rectangles as a quilting shape, so created what I call 'random rectangles' over most of the rest of the background -- dense from the top most of the way down, but sparser as I drew closer to the quilted leaf designs on the bottom.

Then what?  Those little leaf shapes look very bland now!  I decided to experiment with my red InkTense pencil, and this is how it turned out:

Now they look very red, don't they?  I have no purple, but there is a blue pencil in the set, so I think I'm going to gather my nerve and over-colour, just to see what happens.  It might even be terrific!  And if not...well, as teacher Anna Hergert so often says, "It's just a sample".  :-)

I have no personal connection....

to this book, but I suggest you take a good look at it.  The author, Malka Dubrawsky, does great things with colour in her quilting; I guarantee her work will bring a smile to your face!  Scroll down the page and look at the short video interview she has with Quilting Arts Editor, Pokey Bolton.  There are close-ups of the pieces in the book.  And yes, it would make a great Christmas gift for any quilter you know!  Tell your friends!

And when it rains...

There's an indoor studio....wherein I'm practicing my FMQ (Free Motion Quilting) for "God, of Your Goodness". I knew I wanted to quilt heart shapes on the robe, to repeat the motif of the hand applique...and then I found Leah Day and her great tutorial on hearts and spirals FMQ in the new Interweave "e-mag", Quilting Arts in Stitches. I still need more practice to really loosen up with this motif, so that's on tap for this afternoon.

That, and playing with leaves -- again. This time it's not ivy, but aspen, for the third piece in my "Nature" series, also entitled... um... "Aspen".