I think that Joy, from the Days Filled with Joy blog has the right idea! Actually, she advocates two great quilting ideas….. attack your UFOs systematically and celebrate your progress every month. We easily forget the delight of our finishes all too soon, while those unfinished things can really grate. So I am going to try to start being more deliberate about remembering progress and also finishing some UFOs.
So, August 2017 at Clever Chameleon looked like this…..
we had 8 great Colour Inspiration Tuesdays, producing 10 great colour boards…… What?! “But there were only 5 Tuesdays in August”, I hear you say. Yes, but we had our first link up with Stitched in Color and we went a bit silly with the colour boards, didn’t we?! And it was Fun. My “Hazy Days” fabric mosaic even made the ten finalist entries in the Stitched in Color Summer Crush contest.
we had 3 great quilt ideas come out of Colour Inspiration Tuesday, and I seriously want to Do. Them. All! Digging for Pineapples generated a sentimental modern quilt idea that I want to do for me. The other two ideas have significant pattern potential. OK, so the UFOs might have to wait…..
we did some sewing…. I nearly finished the tumbling blocks quilt top for my daughter. Actually, I did finish the tumbling blocks patchwork, but then I decided I wanted to change a few things. so it is currently back in (several large) pieces….. 🙂
we checked in on the Patchwork and Quilting Tailwind Tribe we started in July, and it is going very well. So far we have 18 members, and have generated over 220 shares and over 225 re-pins. Very pleased! Click here if you’d like to join.
So, a pretty busy month, now that I look back! Thanks for reading and being part of my motivation. I hope you found something of worth at Clever Chameleon in August. If you had a favourite post, I’d love to know.
From the Sewing Room – The Stylised Flower motif and how I free-motion quilt with baking/tracing paper
Last time we talked quilting, I had just finished stabilising two charity quilts and deciding how I was going to quilt them. This week I have finished quilting the first of these, and I learned a number of lessons along the way that I thought you might be interested in. There is also a free downloadable template of the flower motif nearer the end of this post if you want to give it a go yourself.
Last week I designed a stylised flower motif to cover the pieced blocks of a red, brown and cream quilt that my daughter has dubbed “Jaffas and Cream”. Do you know what Jaffas are? They are an Australian and New Zealand chocolate treat. Delicious. But I digress….. 🙂
Stylised flower quilting motif over a Jaffas and Cream quilt block
At first I decided I was going to quilt this motif freehand, like the daisy I did on a similar quilt. I planned to mark the diagonal lines with chalk, and once I had the orange peels stitched in place, quilt the petals and corner details around the main lines. But it was not to be. I had “one of those days”, quilting-wise.
I marked up the first block with chalk and set to work. But I couldn’t get the tension between the top and bottom threads just right. Once I had what I thought was an acceptable balance, I couldn’t get the nice sweeping curves I wanted for the orange peel backbones. I started again on a second block, this time with extensive chalk markings to guide the sweeping lines. But still to no avail. I gave up and unpicked.
The dirty culprit….
Coming back at it later, I realised that the pre-wound bobbin was not spooling off nicely. I’m not even sure how to describe this issue in words…. The thread coming off was suffering friction from the adjacent thread still on the bobbin slightly trapping it. But not consistently. That was why I couldn’t get a nice stitch flow and happy tension. This is not the first time I have had trouble with these commercially wound bobbins, but it was the worst. I like the actual bobbin thread, but I will only be buying cones to wind my own bobbins from now on. This was Lesson 1.
Anyway, I re-wound the bobbin thread from the pre-wound bobbin onto a fresh bobbin. Having fixed the main problem, I also changed the needle for good measure. I was ready to go again. But my free-motion confidence and chilled disposition was now shot for the day!
The baking paper approach to the stylised flower motif
In the past when I have wanted to quilt a design that is too hard to do without marking, I have often traced it onto baking paper and quilted over the tracing. Then I pull the paper away. So, feeling a bit frazzled, I decided to ditch the freehand stitching and use a tracing. I have never tried this before on my Sweet 16, but I didn’t expect things to be particularly different to on my domestic machine. Wrong!
Stylised Flower motif after trace-stitching, before pulling off the paper.
It turns out that trace-stitching with the Sweet 16 is a different art to on my domestic machine. I think this is because on the domestic machine you are sitting more over the needle, and it’s slower. Both of these things means it is easier to retrace your stitches exactly when you need to back track. My first attempt at tracing the stylised flower motif was messy. It also resulted in too many small fragments of paper to pick out, trapped in the not quite aligned back-stitching. Agggh. I didn’t like it, it didn’t have the clean look that I set out to achieve, and it was going to take too long to clean the paper off 25 blocks. This was Lesson 2.
This was my first attempt at tracing the stylised flower motif. I actually intended to leave this as it was, but the remaining flowers worked out so much better, that I did rip it out and replace it once the other 24 blocks were done.
I ended up rethinking my stitching path several times to get a much neater and faster result. Lesson 3, and the one I am most satisfied with! If you would like to know how to best stitch out this design using baking paper, here is the method I settled on.
Tutorial: The Stylised Flower Quilting Motif
Supplies and Printing
The first thing you will need to do is print out the motif from the downloadable file below. Then you can trace it or print it onto tracing paper/baking paper/parchment paper. I use “Greaseproof paper” for my projects, found in the kitchen section of the supermarket. It is a type of baking paper. The cheapest versions are best; thinner and less slippery than quality baking paper brands. Save the expensive baking paper for your actual baking! And don’t get confused with waxed kitchen paper. Waxed paper is not good for this project.
Click here to download the pdf of the stylised flower motif.
Please note that the pdf is formatted to the A4 standard for Australia. You may need to adjust your printer settings if your default paper size is “letter”. The size of the provided motif is 5.75 inches square. This is because my blocks started at 6 inches square, but shrunk a little when I stabilised them. The final design is slightly smaller than my blocks, to ensure the whole motif fits inside.
I print my designs directly onto greaseproof paper by taping the greaseproof paper to a piece of office paper as a “carrier”. The greaseproof paper won’t go though the printer alone because it is too flimsy and it gets jammed. I use white paper-backed masking tape to attach the greaseproof paper to the office paper. This has never harmed my laser printer, but I take no responsibility for anything you put through your own printer. If you are unsure about putting unorthodox things through your printer, trace the design by hand.
Baking paper taped over printed office paper, ready for printing (left) and after printing (right).
Quilting the Stylised Flower
Pin the design to your quilts with quilting safety pins.
Pinned and ready to go.
First the leaves….
To quilt the stylised flower motif, enter into the design from one corner and travel to the diagonally distant corner through the centre point. Then quilt the first half of the corner “leaflet” and stop.
Follow the red line to quilt his design
I then tear the paper out of the way so that I can complete the leaflet and travel back to the centre of the design without double-stitching over any paper. Use the back of a seam ripper or a pin to neatly score the paper so it only tears away from where you want it gone.
Scoring the baking paper for controlled removal. You will also notice in this picture that I adjust the design on the fly to fit each block so that it reaches the edges.I now use the stitching lines already done as a reference for where to stitch next.
Finish the leaf and return to the first corner of the design through the centre. Finally, finish the little leaflet in that corner.
Now, travel along the edge of the block (stitch-in-the-ditch) to one of the two remaining leaves.
Travel along the ditch
Repeat the above steps to quilt the remaining leaves. Except, once you return to the centre after completing the third leaf, enter the first petal and stop with the needle down.
After finishing the third leaf, enter the first petal. Make sure you pause at the top of this first petal for more paper removal.
Then the petals….
Tear all the paper out of the middle so that you can see where you are stitching and to avoid back-stitching over paper. Be careful to leave the tops of the petals visible so that you can still see where to stitch.
Remove the paper from the flower centre, sparing the tops of the petals.Paper removed. Now quilt the petals using the petal tops and the leaf edges as visual guides.
Complete the petals using the petal tops and leaf edges as visual guides. Quilt into the centre for each petal but stop just short of actually touching the centre point to avoid a build up of thread there. Where petals cross over the leaf edges, don’t quilt into the centre again. Just bounce off the leaf stitching line to the next petal top. Finally, finish the last leaflet as you exit the block.
Finished stylised flower quilting motifAfter the paper is removed, finish quilting the petals.
What if you want to quilt this design, but not in a block?
If you are not quilting this design into a block and can’t travel invisibly between corners, you can also quilt it as shown below. I did actually do two blocks with this method before I changed to the described method above. I changed only because I found it easier to quilt the “S” shape straight through the centre than to neatly arc through in a half circle to the third leaf. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. I just did!
Another perfectly good way to quilt the stylised flower.
The rest of the quilting on this quilt
I completed the quilt with a vine of leaves in the sashing, and piano keys in the border with orange peels in the border corners.
Quilting in the sashing and borderOrange peels in the corner
That is it for me for this charity quilt. Now it is ready to go to the next quilter in the production process for binding.
Finished “Jaffas and Cream” quilt.
I hope you enjoy playing with this motif and making it your own. Let me know if you quilt it so I can feature your work for everyone else to see!
Do use a brand of pre-wound bobbin thread for your Sweet 16 that you would recommend. I’d love to know! Please comment below!
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August 2017 Roundup at Clever Chameleon
we did some sewing…. I nearly finished the tumbling blocks quilt top for my daughter. Actually, I did finish the tumbling blocks patchwork, but then I decided I wanted to change a few things. so it is currently back in (several large) pieces….. 🙂
we did some quilting……. I finished a baby quilt for charity this month. I also stabilised two further charity quilts, so this was a big quilting month by my slowish standards.
we had a tutorial on sewing tumbling blocks patchwork and an in depth discussion about the up-sides of quilting printed fabric panels.
So, a pretty busy month, now that I look back! Thanks for reading and being part of my motivation. I hope you found something of worth at Clever Chameleon in August. If you had a favourite post, I’d love to know.
