Playing With The Ultimate Background Stencil

I recently purchased a set of Ultimate Background Stencils from Cindy's Threadworks.  She carries Cindy Needham's stencils as well as a variety of other thread related products.  I have long been a fan of Cindy Needham's work.  I came across a table cloth with a small amount of open work and thought it was time to try some of Cindy's techniques.  Then Quilt Shop Gal offered a few incentives to get started.

I drew a feather template to trace.

I traced the feathers and added the background stencil onto the top.

Table cloth pinned to blue cotton, batting and backing.

Cut away detail.

A quilting friend who is an amazing hand quilter suggested using overhead pens in green to mark quilting lines.  This is a first for me.  I'm looking forward to washing it out to see how the quilting looks.  That's a long way off though.  There will be quite a bit of detail quilting to come.

The chosen stencil for the center.

Free-motion stitching the cross hatching.

Other stencils in the set.

I thought about using the clam shell stencils as well.

The appearance of lovely texture.

Another shot of texture.

Thank you Cindy Needham and Quilt Shop Gal for all of your encouragement and support.

It Took A Grand Illusion ...

...to finally get me to blog again.  It's been years.  I've enjoyed watching the progress of so many participants in Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt.  I've been so tempted previous years but haven't had enough fabric to pull off the beautiful scrappy look that Bonnie's quilts are famous for.  This year, I decided to join in.  I needed the diversion over the holidays due to family illnesses, which is one of the reasons Bonnie chooses the holiday season to promote her mysteries.  I didn't have much in the way of pinks and blacks so I changed those colours to blues and purples.

It's not quite a flimsy yet, but getting there.  I need to do a little pressing, sew the rows together and play with the border size since I'm only doing a 3 by 4 block setting instead of the 5 by 5.

Check out all the other submissions at Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville blog.
Thank you Bonnie.  I really enjoyed participating.

Bitten By the GS Bug

As soon as I get up each morning, I try to jump on the computer and check the recent posts from people on my blog list.  I'm so inspired by their posts and enjoy seeing the pictures of their projects.  Last weekend, Paulette, of Sweet Pea Quilting, chatted about her Garage Sale experiences.  I never think of looking for fabric and books at Garage Sales, so her post prompted me into action.  This weekend, there was one listed in our area.  I arrived right at 9:00, and soon 2 other quilters joined me at the table filled with boxes of fabric and magazines.  The seller is still quilting, so the items were all things that were extras to her.  I found one small box filled with ziplock bags of sorted fabrics. 

Once I arrived home, I went through each bag to find out how much was included in each fabric.  Most are about the size of a FQ but some are half meter cuts.  Some pieces had small portions cut out of them, probably for applique projects.  That's what I think I'll use the material for as well.  Each bag contained about 1 and 1/2 meters and each was $1.00.  The white material is cheesecloth.  That should be fun to use with puff paint and gesso.

Did I need more magazines?  Not really, but I couldn't pass up the price.  These were 5 for 1$.  When I'm finished with them, I won't feel bad about passing them on to other quilters at our guild donation table.  I had hoped to find books, but as I arrived, a fellow was just counting up his 2 foot high stack of miscellaneous books that he had gleaned.  Some of them were quilt books and I really don't think he's a quilter.  I wonder what his markup will be?  All in all, I was quite pleased with what I found and I'm sure I'll be perusing the ads for future sales.  I think I'm hooked.

A Little More Free-Motion Quilting

It's the last day of the month in the evening.  How's that for leaving it to the last minute.  I love how swirls look when quilted.  I like the puff that the rounded areas create throughout a background.  I especially like it when it is done with a tighter pattern and small circles pop out here and there.  The Jester's Hat that Wendy Sheppard taught for this month's challenge hosted by SewCalGal has that kind of pattern.   Here are a couple of practice doodles I created using the Jester's Hat motif.

My earlier doodles included more swirls than hat tips.

I started getting the hang of the hat with leaves in the center.

I found it a little difficult to quilt evenly.  This will take a little more practice.

I really enjoy reading Wendy Sheppard's blog called Ivory Spring.  She has some great tutorials.  Thank you Wendy and SewCalGal for hosting these tutorials.

August FMQ Challenge

Wendy Sheppard of Ivory Spring is the tutor for the month of August in Sew Cal Gal's Free-Motion Quilting Challenge.  In this challenge, Wendy shows how to create a Jester's Hat design with a leaf icon added.  Here are a couple of practice doodles that I created a while ago.  Love how smooth this is to do.  It feels very natural.

I used this design for the background on my Billie Holiday piece and added some leaves and musical notes.  I used Coats and Clark Dual Duty for the top and bobbin so that I wouldn't get any pop up showing on the dark background fabric.  The thread colour is dark green.  I was going to use a dark grey or black to match the background but I thought that if it blends in too well, I won't be able to see where I am going as I stitch.

Jester's Hat with leaves and feathers added.

Can you spot the musical notes symbols?

This was so fun to stitch.  Since I completed this quilting a couple months before August, I won't be able to submit it for the challenge, but it fits in so well with the techniques that Wendy teaches and it's nice to see adaptations.  See what everyone else is doing for August at Sewcalgal.