Machine Quilting Harvest of Hope

Hello Everyone,

Start up your machine quilting engines and let the quilting begin!  While I'm making a quilt, I'm always planning and thinking about how I'm going to quilt it.  This looks absolutely nothing liked I'd planned.

I get started on the machine quilting and a little gremlin in my brain takes over and says, "Try this." So I did.  The tight stipple, and straight line quilting created an additional little open area between the corner-square triangles. 

I echo quilt around everything.....which takes forever.  My echo quilting is about as rapid as a snail. When I change thread colors, I'll go back and quilt some veins in the leaves all at the same time.....if I don't forget!  I've done that before.  I've taken the quilt off the machine and realized I'd forgotten to quilt something.  That's when I start to growl and blue words drift out of my machine quilting room! 

I wasn't going to quilt feathers, but the area wanted them, and they show up so nicely on the polka dot maroon border.

I use this little tool to create the perfect semi-circles around the triangles.

Here's the method that I use to make the lines for cross-hatching.  No, that is not a roll of toilet paper, it's a roll of adding machine tape.  I started by cutting off a section of adding machine tape the exact length of the area that I want to cross-hatch.  I do this before I load the quilt on the machine.

I fold the tape over and over until it looks like an accordion.  First fold it in half, then in half again and so on and so on. This evenly distributes the length into even sections.

I mark a little line on each of the folds, and then transfer that mark to the fabric.  See my tiny little black marks?

I marked both the top and bottom of the 2" strip, then I used a ruler and stitched from mark to mark and back again to create the cross-hatch.  It gives me the look of an old, padded, satin jewelry box. 

I still have to quilt the pumpkins in the top corners.  I'm directionally challenged when it comes to quilting loop-de-loops upside down, so I'll be turning the quilt to work on the top pumpkins.  I can quilt the bottom pumpkins when I get to them without any problems.....but those top pumpkins are going to have to turn, and I'll quilt them when I quilt the feathers in the side borders.

I'll keep working on this today.  I'd like to get it finished and off the machine so I can start the binding and put this one in the finished column by the end of the week. Now about those directions I was going to write by the light of the moon......it's not happening folks. 

 

Soon,

Lynn