An Hour a Day

The saga of the Split the Check quilt from The Versatile Nine Patch book continues.

Last week, it was pin-basting and the beginning of some straight line quilting.

This week, we've graduated to free motion elements.

Last time, I believe I left off with the straight quilting in-the-ditch and 1/4" along the 'blue' side of the stripes.

A this point, I have added similar in-the-ditch and 1/4" quilting using the walking foot with green thread on the green striped pattern areas, creating a four rows of quilt lines along each striped sashing element.

With all the straight line quilting in place, I switched to the darning foot, dropped the feed dogs on my BERNINA, and moved into free motion territory.

As before, I remove the pins a little at a time to make way for the quilting.

And I chose an easy, fluid fill pattern that looks a bit like connected triangles. As I form the triangle, I make the outside shape, then create a shadow of that shape inside, and leave a path to come out of the shape. This in-and-out technique takes a little practice, but once you get it, it's easy, fun, and fast!

Because I quilt on my domestic machine and not a long arm, I often get questions about 'how' I get the 'whole' quilt into the machine throat. And the answer is I don't (or at least, I rarely do). I usually plan the quilting so I only have to get to the center of the quilt, so that means, I only have to get half of the quilt in the throat at any point.

I don't roll, or use clips. I do work a section at a time and remove pins as I go. Only the ~10-12" square-ish section that I'm working on at the moment is flattened by the palms of my hands and swirled in place under the needle. I'm constantly changing position and direction so rolling up the parts of the quilt I'm not working on doesn't make sense and gets cumbersome.

At least for me. It's hard to describe the process, but I just squish, flatten, and move. A fair amount of practice helps. A long time ago, I also had to let go of the fear (fear of making a mistake, or of 'ruining' the quilt). I feel the quilting adds character, and the look and feel of the organic flowy quilting is my preference for my quilts.

As you can see, each green 'stripe' gets filled in with the stitching.

I'll switch threads back to blue and repeat the process - perhaps with a different fill pattern - in the blue spaces.

Just like last week, the powder blue backing makes it a bit easier to see the quilting pattern as it develops.

And a closer look at the triangle fill free motion quilting from the back of the quilt.

This little garter sssnake ssstartled me while I was sssssnapping picturessss. I think I might have disturbed his sssssleep.

An hour a day at the sewing machine doesn't seem like much. But each hour added advanced the project that one extra step.

At this point, I start to get excited about the finish. Nothing like adding that last stitch to the binding and calling it 'done!'

But not quite yet. . . .

Happy Stitching!
Joan