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Wednesday, July 25, 2012

July UFO Update

Thanks for all the great ideas for my Civil War Quilt. It is still on the design wall and I am pondering all the suggestions while I machine quilt my July UFO (pinch hitter) in spite of the hot summer weather here. Just imagine that it's 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) and this quilt is on your lap while you try to shove it through your sewing machine! I do have a very old window air conditioner that I run only when I am quilting, and I have a fan blowing on me, but I have only been able to quilt in short (sweaty) spurts.
In the comments on this postAngela and Mary suggested curvy/wavy quilting designs, and Bea suggested a line to line diagonal. I thought these were great ideas for this quilt. Because I am kinda bored with straight lines (and the walking foot) I tried some wavy diagonal lines with the free motion foot.
It was a quick, and fairly effortless, design. I liked the wavy quilting motion ... kinda like floating on an air mattress on the lake!
I "waved" all the seam lines between the blocks, then down the centers of the blocks, and finally on the block diagonals. 

Isn't this cool how the quilting lines intersect at the block corners?!?
I have been using a Bobbin Washer  and my beloved Aurifil thread, and have not had a single issue with thread breakage or tension...love that!
So far so good. 
Now what for the borders?
I'm guessing more waviness of some sort!!? One more week to finish the quilting and binding before the end of the month.

6 comments:

  1. What a lovely, soft palette you've chosen for this one - it will be fun to crawl in under on a cool evening. Maybe thoughts of that will help you stay cool as you toil through the heat!

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  2. Such great colors in this one. Goes great with the soft wavy lines. More wavy lines in the border? Maybe in sort of a cable formation?

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  3. I occasionally use the wavy, diagonal line for quilting, and I love it! You have more margin for error, don't have to be as precise, and the soft meandering look goes with about anything.
    You're putting your Brother 1500 through its paces on this lovely quilt.

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  4. The soft colors with the soft, wavy lines make for a very soothing, comfortable looking quilt.

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  5. love the quilting! much better than my suggestion

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  6. For my charity quilts I do an elongated serpentine stitch and "stitch in the vicinity of the ditch". I go zoomy fast and it looks cute and it holds together well through washing. I've done some free motion quilting on cheater panels that don't lend themselves to straight line stitching but I feel so uncoordinated when I do that. I just need to practice more so that my butterflies don't look like mutations from Chernobyl.

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