at b-quilts.com
This is a great video showing how to make a quilting stencil using the Silhouette Cameo. A stencil like this could be used for hand quilting. It would also be a great way to make a stencil for marking for free motion or freehand longarm quilting.
This video is by Margaret Wilburn at her blog “Crazy4Cutters”
Today’s post is a teaser for Sherry. Finished her quilt this weekend, and it turned out beautifully. This one was a challenge in choosing a quilting design so I finally chose lines that were similar to the patterns in the batiks. The piecing is the piece de resistance on this quilt, so the quilting really needed to be less obvious. And I think that was achieved in the area of the piecing, but am not as happy that I did it edge to edge, as it might have looked nicer with a more neutral treatment in the borders–or at least a thread that matched the border fabric. However, we can second guess ourselves forever — so I have decided to be happy with it the way it is. The quilting design is called “Greener Grass” and it is one I designed several years ago based on my own freehand quilting.
After posting yesterday, I continued to quilt some samples until I had a better idea of what I wanted to do on the candy hearts quilt. If you remember, this is how I started.
After looking at this a bit, I decided to change the heart. After I did that, I looked at the background fill and decided that it would be better visually, if it were round. In the top part of the image below, you can see how I changed the background fill in the upper part of the block.
This gave me a pretty good idea of where I was going, so I loaded the Candy Hearts quilt and started work on it. I finished the stitch in the ditch and the ribbon candy in the frames and have started adding the hearts in the plain blocks. The plain blocks are smaller than my sample, so will have to see what fill will work best in the wider areas.
I saw a fun project last weekend and knew I just had to make these for my grandchildren. I can remember what rambunctious fun I had growing up with two brothers and a sister and my grandchildren can get pretty rambunctious too. So, I started making snowballs–yes, snowballs! It takes about five minutes at the most to hoop my fabric and stitch out these cute little faces. The balls are made in the shape of a baseball, so they’re one continuous seam. These snowballs are made from cotton lycra (dancewear fabric) because that’s what I had in my closet, but I’ve ordered some white fleece from Joann’s. They’re filled with fluffy fiberfill. I think about 2-3 dozen snowballs should be enough for three children. What fun to build forts and have a great snowball fight. (I purchased the embroidery files from http://www.CharmingStation.com.
And this is the second thing I’m working on–ideas for quilting my candy hearts quilt. There are alternating plain blocks in that quilt, so this is what I’m thinking about doing for the plain blocks. I stitched it out this morning to size the hearts and see how it would look. I’m pretty pleased, but think I’ll use either a wool batting or a layer of Dream Request weight underneath my Hobbs Heirloom batting to give the quilting of the heart shape more definition. This quilting is with only one layer of Hobbs Heirloom.
Just wanted to share how I figured out the curved lines for quilting on this quilt. I wanted to be able to follow the curvy lines of the rickrack applique . My attempts at following the lines kept getting off track and it would end up too wide or too narrow at the top or bottom. And then the light flickered. Recently I read (and can’t remember who or where it was) on a blog about using masking tape for marking a quilt for straight line quilting. This person suggested that one could use masking tape and rather than stitching right next to the tape, it would be better to stitch 1/4″ away so as to not stitch into the tape.
I decided to use the rickrack die to make a quilting template. First, I layered painter’s tape on the foam over the top of the blade, then ran it through the cutter. I actually added more tape to the straight edge to make it stay completely straight when I put it on the quilt. In the beginning I marked the quilt with a blue line following the tape, but that was just too time-consuming. So, I put the tape on the quilt and stitched a quarter inch away and used it for two or three lines and then moved it.
Here’s another quilting design that I decided to try. This is a small quilt that Norma pieced. Because of the bright colors and busy pattern, it’s more difficult to see the quilting very well, but it is simply an angular meander. This was so much fun to quilt, and I like the way it looks on the quilt.
I did a lot of doodling on paper and on my Kindle Fire Whiteboard before quilting. The black and white picture below is what it looks like on the Whiteboard from my Kindle Fire. I’m glad my quilting looks better than my doodling.
