Showing posts with label free motion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free motion. Show all posts

Friday, August 17, 2018

Quilt #110: Murphy's Oops and Orphans quilt


A few years ago, I stumbled upon Elm Street Quilt's One Monthly Goal challenge. Quilters and creator write a post describing a goal they hope to complete that month. Then share the goal in Elm Street Quilt's linky party. At the end of the month, if we complete our goal, we write another post sharing our success and add that that post to the completed goal party. Then we are eligible to win prizes!

I've often used the challenge to finish UFOs or start quilts that taken a little more mojo to get started (or finished!) At the beginning of the month, I look at my whiteboard of projects and often choose one of my tier two projects as my OMG. 


For months and months and months, one of the projects in my third column was my "oops and orphans" quilt. I have a ridiculous about of scraps from all the quilts I've made. Mostly, they are sorted by color, but I have another bin with practice blocks and leftover pieces like half square triangles and strip sets. (Note to self: 2019 will be the year of scrappy quilts).


In May of 2018, I finally choose my Oops and Orphans quilt as my One Monthly Goal. I had three goals:

1. Use up some of the fabric in my Oops & Orpans bin.
2. Practice free motion

I didn't have any intention of doing anything big, just a little something to whet the appetite for later on. I ended up making a four block set. You can see more detail pictures of the quilt here. 


I wasn't sure what I was going to do with quilt, so I left it unbound until Mom and her Havanese, Murphy came to visit. That's when I decided that Murphy needed his own quilt. 


This quilt has been a little small for D to sleep with to wrap his love in it. But he has played with Murphy instead, so I think that counts.



We haven't had a dog in the house since our Bailey passed away in 2011. D is very allergic to dogs. He has been taking desensitization drops for more than two years. Mom purposely bought a Havanese because they are said to be hypo-allergenic (or as much as a dog can be). D has done amazingly well. As long as he takes a Benedryl in the morning, he has no reaction at all!  


Murphy decided to spend the summer with us in Ohio to avoid the Arizona heat, so he uses his quilt in my car. We've had to have a few discussions about who gets to drive, but he's getting used to his shotgun position.


Posted by Jen @ de Jong Dream House at 8:33 PM 18 comments
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Thursday, May 31, 2018

One Monthly Goal :: May 2018 Update


It's the last day of the month, so I had to get my behind in gear to finish my goal this month. My brain injury has been giving me grief and I've had such a hard time getting going for the last few weeks. Oh, and I also did this.


The crazy thing is, I'm not even sure how it happened. The doctor isn't even sure if it's tendonitis or a sprained thumb, but the treatment is the same. After having my left foot in a walking boot the last two summers, a brace for my thumb doesn't seem so bad,  but it does get in the way of my quilting!

Challenges aside, I'm happy to report that I did well this month with my one monthly goal. My goal was to start my Oops and Orphans quilt using some of my practice, sample, leftover, and not-quite-right blocks, as well as small scraps given to me by my quilting guild.


In addition to using up bins and bags of scraps, I wanted to push myself to practice free motion quilting. I used the Quilt as You Go so that I could use up batting scraps as well, and could start with smaller pieces. (I used 15.5" squares).

Making the scrappy blocks was rather fun. The bag I used was made up of 1.75" strips. I decided to sew them into long strips and used them to make each Oops block into 15.5"--easy peasy.


 I cut the batting and backing 17.5" square and used basting spray rather than pins. So far, so good.


For the first square, I tried my hand at a basic meander. The result was pretty herky-jerky. I can why a stitch regulator is so nice. I do not have a stitch regulator.


My second block was more of a geometric meander, though I had more curves than all right angles as I intended. 


For my next two blocks I used the quilting ruler I picked up at a quilt show a few years ago.  The large waves got easier after the first few rows.


The small waves were a bit trickier, but I'm happy with my first attempt.


I started a fitth block, but my sewing machine was DONE with free motion and I could not get it to work again. (I found a Pfaff shop close my son's Dutch school. In the fall, I'm going to bring my machine up there while he's a school to make sure I'm setting everything up right and have someone who knows my machine looking over my shoulder).


I ripped out all the wonky stitches and tried again (I was doing matchsticks so it was a lot!), but the thread kept breaking. (Same thread that worked beautifully for everything else). So I decided that four blocks was a good start for this goal

I intended to use Jera Brandvig's method as she describes in her book, Quilt As-You-Go. 


Unfortunately, I didn't read the book before starting my quilting. Her method has the quilting done with just the top and batting. Oops.

I found Jennie Doan's method on YouTube. I was able to modify her method to make my blocks work. I took two of my squared up blocks and placed them backing sides together. 


I sewed a 1" seam.


First I pressed the seam open. You can see that there is still some free motion quilting within the seam allowance. I may or may not rip that out at some point


Then, I folded each side of the seam under itself to hide the raw edge.


I didn't pin the folded under seam because it was pretty thick with the batting. Jennie's version is such that it's only fabric--no batting. Follow Jennie's lead.  Then I top stitched the folded under seam, checking every couple inches to make sure that the seam was completely tucked under.


Since I had four decent blocks, I decided to add the other two blocks. This is why Jennie's method is better. I had to cut out the notches of batting on either side of my seams because it was too thick. Here's the first notch.


At this point, my quilt is approximately 30" x 30". I'm trying to decide what to do with these quilts.  Obviously, they aren't my best work, so I don't want to donate them to my normal places. I'm thinking I may use smaller blocks to make up kennel mats for our local animal shelter. I'm sure the dogs would love all the smells from some of these vintage prints and they won't care about my wonky free motion. I may make a couple more blocks this size thought to make a slightly larger quilt that I will keep as a reminder of my first attempts at free motion.


Now that I've dug in, free motion isn't so scary. I just need to make time to keep practicing. Fortunately, I have enough scraps to make about a hundred quilt as you go quilts!

Here's a recap of other One Monthly Goals I have made.

June 2017 - no goal

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Posted by Jen @ de Jong Dream House at 8:41 PM 1 comments
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