Sunday, May 20, 2007

Standing up to Quilt

Another perfect day in the country was had by me today. I went out to Janice's house to do some quilting on a community quilt and I was allowed to use her new Juki on the Swiftquilter frame! Boy oh boy was that fun! Janice sneakily took photos of me. She probably will put them on her blog sometime soon, so look here to see if they are up.

I had already pin-basted the quilt and I thought I was just going to free motion using her Juki on the sewing table. In my ignorance I hadn't realised that you could put an already basted quilt on the frame. So after a few false starts (including forgetting to put the presser foot down - 3! times) I was away (and I won't mention the fact that I quilted the top edge of the quilt to the leader fabric.) I wasn't too good at doing the sides so after a couple of winds of the quilt I gave up on that and just quilted the top and bottom border and the centre. I'll finish the side borders on my Singer. Actually now that I think about it we put the quilt on sideways so it is the top and bottom borders that didn't get done.

It took a while to get used to the somewhat limited quilting space. I kept reaching the limit of forwards/backwards movement and ended up with a definite line going across, but hey, not bad for a first attempt (moving the machine a little helped increase the available space and I got better at not doing it as I went along.)

I could really get used to this!


This quilt was pieced by Rosie from the pattern I taught at our half-nighter last year. It is the second one she had made and she decided she didn't want to quilt it so she donated it to our club's community quilts project.

I haven't quite finished the dragonfly wall hanging but all I have to do now is put the eyes on and sew the body to to the quilt. I might get more than one post done this week!

3 comments:

Janice said...

Hi Helen - thanks heaps for coming over yesterday - its always lovely to have your company and I really look forward to our sewing days. I'm sorry about the quilting frame being set a bit too high for you! I didn't think about shorter people using it when I asked Terry to make the trolley that height.... We should get a long step made for you to walk along! or, yes, higher shoes.

Elaine Adair said...

ooohhh, those close-up photos of stitching are enticing. A LQS allows customers to use theirs for a fee. So far, I've not tried it but your photo is encouraging me to give it a go. Thanks!

Jenni said...

So have you decided to start saving Helen? Do you think it would be easily mastered with a bit of practice? I'm still muttering away under my breath as I sew about the one I tried at the Quilt Show.