Monday, January 5, 2009

GRRR!!!

I must take the time to learn to free motion quilt......grrrr!  I spent the last two days trying to come up with plan B to quilt the outside borders on my current Ace of Diamonds quilt.

Hand work simply didn't achieve the necessary texture....so after trying various patterns and colors of thread.....I'm now struggling to repeat the diamond quilting pattern I hand quilted in the center.  Doing this by machine means starting and stopping a LOT.....and pulling the thread ends to the back, tying them off, and burying them.  

This will take forever!!!  GRRRRR!!!!  


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Learn to love stitching in the ditch - in other words, don't stop at the edge of the diamond and tie off and start again on the other side. Instead carefully stitch along that already stitched line around the diamond to get to the other side. Same when you hit the border-center seam; stitch down the seam to get to the next line of stitching and head back. The double stitched seams won't show - honest. I've never, ever gotten a judges comment on it.

Anita Heady Fiber Arts, LLC said...

I'm no expert, Mary, but try this on paper. In your border you can do half-x type diagonal lines, left, then right in one continuous line all the way down your border. When you get to the bottom, turn around and cross those x's with opposite diagonals. Does this make sense to you? This way the lines will cross and you will have diamonds...and only two long lines of stitching.

Anonymous said...

Tx's Marcella.....Great idea....not sure I can stitch in the ditch at the border-center seam since I already hand quilted there.....will experiment and see how that looks on the back side. I actually soooo prefer hand work....but for times like this....I realize I must take time to practice!

Anonymous said...

Anita......before I struggle with another machine quilting project.....I'm going to yell for help ahead of time. I'm committed now to the grid pattern.....but next time!!