Rainy days, another tiny world and quilting the setting triangles

It is a dull rainy day - my favourite kind for quilting! The iridescent glass in the stained glass in the window glows on days like this. It looks like oil on water.

My Guild has a retreat planned for later this month and I was asked to make a tiny world make-do pincushion as a door prize. I finally got it finished last night. I love this little mug and house. Heck, I love each one I make! This is an old Japan mug that I found at the local thrift shop.

I used variegated floss for the pink posies along the path. They are little French knots. The path was made with a small strip of olive stretch velour and I used a variegated brown rayon thread to stitch over it and hold it in place. The green for the lawn was another find at Fabricland. It is a lightweight wool and acrylic blend that is the perfect grass colour and at $3/metre the price was right!

I hope that the person who wins this pincushion likes it as much as I do. If not I would be happy to welcome it back into my tiny world!

I've outlined all of the Lazy Punk appliqués so I will leave the blocks for the time being and move on to the setting triangles. That means it is decision time! How shall I quilt them? I would like something a little more modern because it is what the recipients of this quilt will like.

I took the Angela Walters Craftsy class Dot-to-Dot quilting. While I have a couple of books on the topic I do like to see "live" demonstrations of how it is done. Simply put rather than marking lines on your quilt top you mark dots and they are your targets, your start and stop points. They are what you aim for when quilting. For smaller spaces the dot system is fine but for larger spaces I think I will be more comfortable drawing my long lines. But who knows, with practice I will likely reach the point where all I'll need is dots but I'm not there yet!

I use my walking foot to stitch the straight lines. They aren't perfect but then who or what is (certainly not me)? I place my hands on either side of the area to be quilted and make sure that the quilt is smooth and flat. I relax, breathe and start stitching on the line. When I approach the  point where my hands can no long hold the fabric flat and smooth I stop making sure that the needle is in the down position. I do not move my hands until the machine has come to a complete stop and I remove my foot from the gas pedal. I reposition my hands once again making sure that the fabric is smooth and flat. I apply pressure to the fabric to make sure that it is held firmly in position so that when I start sewing it will not jump. I relax, breathe and apply even pressure to the gas pedal and start moving the fabric stitching on the blue line. Once all of the straight lines were stitched I filled in the spaces with no marking required.

And here is a close-up of the quilting. As I say, not perfect but I'm okay with it! And I guarantee you this: the last setting triangle I quilt will be much better than this one - that's what happens with practice!

Yesterday Kath asked about the fabric I used to make Red Maple. Aside from the brown and red inner border the quilt was made with one fabric. It is in the outside border and then the blocks were constructed with the One Block Wonder method from the same fabric.

This is the fabric.

And this is the entire quilt.

 

Craftsy has launched its first ever blogger award. You can read about it here.  There are lots of different categories so be sure to nominate your favourite blogs!

 

Time to get back to Lazy Punk (or maybe a cuppa first) so until I post again, happy sewing!