Value Finder, Chinese Coins and Another GG Block

Kathy asked a great question. She saw a green value finder and asked when it would be used. The simple answer is that a red value finder doesn't work particularly well on red fabrics so that is when the green tool would be used. And the green doesn't work well on green fabrics but the red does. Green neutralizes red and red neutralizes green. If you have both a red and green value finder you can use them together to determine the value. The view will be brownish (remember my post yesterday about mixing complementary colours to make brown) but it will give you the value. This can be helpful if you have a multi-colour fabric. Thanks for the great question Kathy!

A friend made a Chinese Coins quilt. I was having an overwhelming urge to quilt feathers so I asked if I could quilt it and she said yes!I love all the bright colours in the columns!

The first thing I did was stitch in the ditch on either side of the columns. I used Superior Monopoly on top and Superior The Bottom Line in the bobbin.

I marked the spine of the vine and was off to the races! I used a brown Frixion pen that has a super fine point; it makes a very fine line that can barely be seen and when I quilted the spine it just disappeared!

I started at the top of the column and quilted the spine working towards the bottom of the quilt. When I got there I started quilting the feather. When I got to the top I quilted back down about 1/4" away from the spine. I'm still using The Bottom Line in the bobbin but on top I switched to Superior So Fine! I'm really loving this thread because it is soft and light weight so there is no heavy build-up where I backtrack. In addition it doesn't produce lint and that makes my sewing machine very happy! It also makes me very happy because it is very affordable and it has the look of a lovely cotton thread!

When I got to the bottom I quilted the right side of the feather. From the top I echo quilted back down along the right side of the feather. I still have to do the left side.

There are four beige columns. Once they are quilted I'll fill in the background and then figure out what to do with the pieced columns. My open toe metal FMQ foot does not like quilting near seams as is the case with the echo quilting. I've got a few other FMQ feet so I'm going to try them out and see if they do a better job for me.

I've got another GG (Godstone Grannies) block finished! That outer round of hexagons took a lot of fussy cutting. There are 28 hexies in that border so that's a lot of fabric. Fortunately I had quite a bit of yardage of the fabric and had only paid $3/meter for it so I didn't mind turning it into Swiss cheese!

Tomorrow will be the launch of my next quilt along, Value Proposition! All of the blocks are made of 1" hexies and they stitch up quite quickly. I hope you'll read along and if you have time sew along with me!

Until tomorrow, happy sewing!
Karen H