I spent the last few days catching up on Leah Day's Express Your Love Goddess Quilt project.
I am using this quit to concentrate on, practice and hopefully improve my free motion quilting. I chose a white background and by the time it is finished I want it to be very densely quilted (or to paraphrase Leah I am going to 'quilt the snot out of it') with a different design in every section. I envisage the finished product to be the same colour as Leah's spoonflower panel which I hope to achieve with thread play.
So I marked the top, sandwiched it, did the outline quilting and was very excited at how well it was all coming together. I was even pleasantly surprised when I finished quilting the phrase. I thought this was going to be quite difficult but I found it relatively simple. I was in the groove and things were just clicking!
Sadly the next day my grove was gone. I practiced my stitches for the 'earth' on a practice sandwich and they turned out really well but when it came to doing them on the real thing it was a different story. Although it is not a large quilt I found maneuvering the bulk whilst trying to keep the stitching consistent was a real challenge. I wobbled all over the place and as a result I am very unhappy with the echo quilting.
It is taking all of my willpower to stop myself from ripping those stitches out. I have to remind the perfectionist in me that this is a learning tool and I will get better. Who knows, by the end of the project my quilting will be so impressive no will notice the wonky ocean current!
Happy quilting everyone.
Sue
Your fmq is amazing! This is going to be a great quilt. Thank you for visiting my blog. Did you know you come up as a noreplyblogger. If you enter giveaways be sure to put in your email so address so they can contact you :)
ReplyDeleteYou are doing great, but you are waaaay to hard on yourself. Your earth looks wonderful. Just remember it's a HANDmade quilt, not computer generated! The variation adds interest. :)
ReplyDeleteIt is looking very good to my eyes.
ReplyDeleteI always find echo quilting to be more difficult than freehand because you can't help but notice every deviation. It doesn't show with quilting that dense though, I think your earth looks great!
ReplyDeleteLooks wonderful! I love your choice of doing this on white, and your letters and outline are great as well. I am doing another outline tomorrow and hope my lines look as smooth as yours.
ReplyDeleteI know just what you mean about stitching working on the practice piece and then just struggling when it's the real deal. So frustrating! It's going to look beautiful when it's all done though . . .
ReplyDeleteGood choice of words in the phrase! and yes, it is harder to echoquilt perfectly. I didn't manage to do a perfect one myself, but I enjoyed doing it and someday, my stitching will be perfect, or atleast better than it is now. Keep it up!!
ReplyDeleteThat is beautiful... you should be proud... my logic is if a quilt is perfect, there is no personality in it!
ReplyDelete