Weekend Roundup

What a great feeling it is to release a quilt from the Handi Quilter frame! I agonise over the quilting for weeks because my confidence is still not up there. I scour Pinterest for ideas which are definitely within my skills range and if you do follow me on Pinterest.....apologies for pinning so much regards FMQ. While I was doing this, I came up with an idea that would help me come up with a fmq plan as well as practise the design.

Here is my tip: I photocopy some parts of my quilt (black & white is more economical) and then I start filling in the designs with a Frixion Pen - this is the lower left corner of the quilt. If I mess it up or am not happy with what I have drawn, I go to the ironing board and.....hey Presto....the heat removes the pen marks in seconds and I am left with the blank paper "quilt" to  re-hash the design again . This quilt had two main areas of quilting.....the borders and the applique blocks.

With my design decided upon, I got to pinning the quilt into the frame. If you are not familiar with the Handi Quilter frame system, the backing and bottom end of the flimsy is pinned on to the leaders and then you baste the wadding and top end of the flimsy to the backing. (gosh, I hope that makes sense) Basting the top to the sandwich is an endless source of frustration for me.  The man who instructed me to do this showed me a method that I just couldn't get right and everytime I have to do it,  I unpick and sew several times only to find it puckering as I quilt. GRRRRRRR!

Well, I am going to get it right if it kills me! Back to the internet where I found an official Handi Quilter tutorial on loading the quilt. The instructor suggests pinning the quilt at regular intervals and then basting it using the Manual function rather than the Regulated......well HE didn't mention THAT!
Guess what.....It Worked! 

Don't you love these pins I used to anchor the fabric. I got them for my birthday.  I'm sorry, I am not sure I can exactly remember who sent them.....but I LOVE them so it's a big Thank You to whoever sent them.

Design planned, quilt loaded and threads chosen. Cream for the blocks and matching blue for the sashing and border. I briefly thought of using the variagated blue but went with the solid in the end.

And so to the quilting.....

I used that planned curly ball design on the first applique block but then decided to try something else

This is apparantly known as McTavishing......not bad for a first try, without practise. But is took so long so maybe something a bit quicker.

so a few blocks have this loop-de-loop and some have McTavishing and some have the curly balls. I stuck to the sashing design but I did mark the quilt so it looked a little more uniform

I also marked the borders to fit the design in but in hindsight, I wish I had not made the marks so far apart. The design looks better closer together as in my plan.

and lastly, the flower to fill in the corner of each border and just so you know I decided not to go with those little pebbles in the narrow pink border.

Far from perfect but that doesn't worry me! I unpicked and redid the bits that worried me. Now it will be put to one side for a couple of weeks as I want to try something with ric-rac for the binding and I need to go shopping for that.

Because this project is technically a BOM that I started way back in 2010, I am linking in to

click pic to find link

and also ,because this is almost the end of an unfinished WIP,  I am linking in to:

click pic to find link