My free-motion quilting will never improve if I keep using the computer on my quilting machine, but when it looks so good (and wasn’t cheap), it’s hard not to use it.
Yesterday I had a half-baked plan and I’ve tweaked it. The spots with the Xs I’ve done. Well, I’ve done more but didn’t go back and take a picture.
I wanted my feathers to show motion. This is what I came up with. The tail will point the direction, going around in a circle. Of course now that I look at this, maybe I should have pointed the far right blocks toward the top center. Oh well. That is what a practice quilt is for. Anyway, the center block has no point. On the second row of blocks, in the middle I ran out of bobbin, then my program shut down. Fortunately it was only the last two feathers in the wreath, so I did them free hand as it was easier than trying to realign the software.
I need practice (see opening comment).
But that’s not when I got cocky.
I dropped my motif in what I thought was a boundary. I thought it was a bit large on the screen, and ignored my instincts. I started up the machine and it started where I thought it was supposed to. I went back to my lap top to search for the perfect pattern for the small neutral blocks (I think I found it). With about 3 feathers left to stitch I realized the machine was stitching all over the HSTs – not because it was doing something wrong, but because I told it wrong. I stopped the machine and started ripping out. That will be tomorrow’s after work activity.
I’m second guessing my thread color now as well. Originally I was going to use a red, white and blue thread on the top and a blue bobbin. But I changed my mind and opted for Linen on the top. Not wanting to deal with blue coming through to the top, I used Linen in the bobbin.
When I wrote this post, I forgot that I needed to link it up to Finished (or Not) Friday over at Alycia Quilts.
