Quilting Along with Leah Day - Week 44

Starry Night - Front
24" H x 24" W

Have you ever started a quick and easy project, then decided to change one or two things only to find yourself hours later enmeshed in a project that is neither quick nor easy? That is precisely what happened to me when I took on the assignment of doing a "Starry Mess" practice piece.

"Starry Mess" is the latest in Leah Day's free motion quilting patterns of overlapping designs. The idea behind the designs are that they are easy to do and quickly secure the quilt top, batting and backing together. They are best used on comfort versus show quilts or art quilts.

What I realized when looking at "Starry Mess" was that this design just didn't call out to me. I liked the stars, but not the mess. I knew I had to tweak it in order to keep myself engaged in the lesson. I began by asking myself where I would like to see stars quilted. I visualized them in the sky background of traditional star blocks.

Tweak number one was to piece an oversized star block I could practice on. It took more time than just selecting a night sky fabric from my stash, but not that much more time. Tweak number two was to add a border to the block. Also, simple, but more time. The problem started when I debated about which fabric to use for the border. The one that made the most sense was the night sky. This lead to tweak number three. How did I distinguish the border from the block? I would add a folded strip in the seams  between the block and the borders. That tweak was a major learning experience.

Detail from Starry Night

The final tweak was modifying the free motion quilting pattern so that each star stood out, but so that it was still one continuous line of quilting. I achieved this by adding a line with a loop in the middle or alternating stringing stars with loops. A modification I am considering for the border is to alternate stars with spirals along a string. I think it could be quite effective.

Detail from the Back Side of Starry Night

Working on a project like "Starry Mess" to a point where it morphs into my interpretation of Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is precisely why quilting calls to me. I may think I want quick and easy. What I thrive on is discovery and seeing a project take on a life of its own.

Machine Quilting with Leah Day - Week 4

This week Leah Day has us following a line with our quilting. We were to follow straight lines, quilt in the ditch, quilt around a pieced element and ultimately mark a quilting pattern and follow that.

My first step was to design a quilt top that would give everything I needed to do the assignment. I began with the striped fabric in the center of the block. I selected a simple eight point star design, similar to Leah's choice of cheater cloth. I made sure to include a solid fabric where a marked pattern could be shown off. I also selected a border fabric that would provide lots of pattern to follow with contour lines.

The Full Design

When possible it is best to start machine quilting in the middle of a quilt, so that is what I did. I quilted in the ditch around the striped square and then around the pieced star. By starting in a corner I never had to go over a line of quilting, however, once I started going up and down the stripes with my quilting line I did travel stitch along the tops and bottoms of the bars in order to avoid ending and restarting my thread.

Close-up of Border, Man in the Moon and Stitch in the Ditch

The close-up image above shows my almost in the ditch but slightly off stitching as I free motioned my way around the star and up and down the bar of the stripes. It also allows you to see the contour stitching around the  flower elements in the border. I had selected a sage green thread for my quilting. In hindsight I might have opted to change threads for the border and use black in order to better blend in with the background fabric.

Close-up of Stars

The last step was to mark the open areas with a design and follow the marked lines. I chose a man in the moon pattern designed by Hari Walner. I tried tracing the image onto the fabric using a graphite tracing paper. The resulting line wasn't clear enough for me to see. I opted to draw the pattern free hand directly on the quilt with a #2 pencil. The 3 stars were also hand drawn, but I just looped them together free hand with the machine.

From a distance of two feet or so my quilting appears to the follow the lines. It is only nose to quilt where the wobbles become evident. Where my biggest struggle comes and has always come is marking the quilt. I need high contrast, strong marks to follow a line. I don't immerse my quilts, so drawing on a water soluble tear away product won't work. I've tried tracing paper, but picking out the bits of paper that invariably get left behind is a bear. Does anyone have a marking solution?

The lesson I learned from this assignment is that my stitches tend to be small as I follow a line. I worked hard at slowing my pedal speed in order to get some length to the stitches, but I just couldn't seem to go slow enough.