Free Motion Quilting is Go
I have a finish and an almost finish to show you all today! First up: the teal chevrons.
This is the wideback I chose for the backing – colours were influenced by the request of the friend commissioning the quilt. I mostly pulled the fabrics from my stash, which was exciting – nice to use what I had on hand instead of ordering and waiting impatiently for fabrics to arrive.
Here’s the finished product – the recipient was extremely happy which is always gratifying. Another commission is also almost complete – I’ll be spending tomorrow sewing up the binding. I wrangled my Brother-2600 into free motion quilting which I’m quite proud of – it doesn’t have droppable feeddogs, so I just turned the stitch length down to 0 and hoped. It worked very well in the end, although I need a higher quilting table because being hunched over the machine for five hours today means I spent a solid 10 minutes working the crunchier bits of my shoulders over with a tennis ball this evening.
Pin basting stage.
I used a Gutermann Sulky 40 weight thread for the quilting. In general I liked it – I love the shimmery barely there quality of it, and how it ties all the colours together. I don’t particularly love how it snaps as soon as I ramp up the speed on my machine (strangely only the top thread, not the bobbin thread) although that seemed to happen mostly in the first 30 seconds after I rethreaded the machine. I had a theory that maybe winding on a new bobbin was pulling at the thread and changing the tension, but winding the bobbins off a second reel of the same colour didn’t repair the issue, so the only solution seems to be to sew slowly.
The inspiration for the colours and shape came from a shot on Instagram I saw of a colour theory talk being given at one of the major quilt conferences in the USA – someone had illustrated a colour wheel using a hexagon and immediately I was drawn to the geometrical possibilities. I chose a forest green for the backing fabric for this one and I’m happily back using the bamboo/cotton blend for the batting. Such a dense quilting pattern has given the quilt a satisfyingly heavy hand.
