The Race string quilt - a few things I did while I quilted it

This is a quick little quilt I made for a pillow top. I called it The Race.

I used the walking foot because I had to do echo quilting.
With a washable marker, I traced one curved line on one pillow diagonal. I stitched the first quilting line following that marking. Then I continued stitching parallel lines until I reached the quilt edge. I repeated for the second diagonal, the final quilting coming out from overlapping the two echo designs.
If you look better you can see my echo stitching lines are not parallel and the distances between them are not equal. For such geometric design, I'm sure The Quilt Police requires accuracy and precision. For a quilter, the perfect stitching is a goal after all.
Well....I'm not sure I will ever become that kind of perfect-quilting-girl because my patience is not so good.
But I'm sure my quilting will look, let's say "prettier" when I will manage to transfer the design from the printed paper onto the quilt top and stitch carefully following the markings. As long I will remember I had to do this only AFTER I already spray basted the sandwich, I will have to apply the same method described above and I will get the same approximate results.

P.S.

Is there anyone interested to test my new quilt pattern Urban Folk and proofread the text? English is not my native language and I know I make mistakes. A few things about Urban Folk layout: here, here, here.

Unfortunately I can't pay you, but you will receive for free the final version of the tested pattern.  

Because I had sad experiences with a few so-called testers, I look forward to keeping in touch only with those of you willing to share with me the simple things I wrote here.    

Have a beautiful quilting day, my dears!

I'm linking to Finished it up Friday!

Self - threading or not?

Do you use self-threading needles?

I was so happy when I found them in the department store. I saw them only on the internet.

How I wanted needles like these! Especially for bury the threads after finishing quilting. And because I have a hard time threading a needle.  

But I was very disappointed when I used the first needle. 

Thread did not slip at all through the small vertical channel. Just breaking. I changed the thread. Breaking. I tried the next needle. The same thing. And so on until the last one. It was the only one working. Because it was the only one having that channel cut! 

So, I paid for one needle the price of six!

You will say that it was an exception, an excusable mistake. I intended to think like this too. But when I bought mine I bought also one package of needles for a friend and she had the same bad surprise. 

Coats Gmbh – Germany, shame on you!

My conclusions after using my only self-threading needle:

                        1.the boring process of the threads burial is faster 

                        2.the needle is too thick and it slips into the fabric with difficulty

                        3.my fingers are stinging from the sharp head of the needle (I don't like wearing thimble)

 These being said, I wish you, as always to

Have a beautiful day! 
With or without self-threading needles!

I am linking to Linky Tuesday 

Done & Learned - Quilt As You Go - (II) A bit of practice

This is the second (and last) post about QAYG technique used to make the Spiral Quilt within the section

The first one is here.

Today: a few things about how I did and what I have learned.

I started by designing the layout. A spiral. 

I made the design quite rough. It was for my eyes only, isn't it?

Next I “split” the design aiming to have to quilt only units of reasonable dimensions.

I thought a few versions of the splitting and I adapted the design accordingly. It was my design, so I could do it modifying the squares, rectangles and HSTs dimensions or their positions in rows. Taking into account which is the largest area I can comfortably quilt at my sewing machine, I divided the quilt in units not larger than this one.

I used the Direct Joining method and machine stitching only.

Each unit of the Spiral Quilt was made from three layers: top + batting + backing.

On each unit I left 1" margin unquilted around the edges, necessary when joining layers of one unit to another.

I cut the batting and backing 1” larger than the top.  It is not the best moment to think about how to save a few inches of fabric. It might happen to not have enough backing fabric to finish the joining. 

This method requires cotton batting because it is necessary to use the iron to flatten the layers.

The scissors must be used very carefully when cutting away the batting excess. It’s very easy to cut slits in the top or backing, if you do not pay attention to keep them out of the way while trimming the batting.

 It’s very important that the edges of the batting meet exactly. In situations like in the picture bellow,  hand stitch them together using a large stitch but handle them with much care because they are very sensible to waving, creating bumps when the backing fabrics will be sewn together. The same care is necessary if you use the sewing machine for this.

At over 60” length of the sides, became visible a waving tendency. But working carefully, without pulling in any direction the batting edges, this tendency might be diminished or even avoided.

In order to give a smooth look to the whole quilt my quilting design included the 1” unquilted bands as part of it as the backing joining stitches are visible on the quilt top. This was another way to prevent from bringing a large piece of quilt under the arm of my small sewing machine to complete the quilting pattern.

For sewing the backing folded joining bands the best results I obtained using the regular sewing foot. It worked through all the three layers better than the walking foot. Don't ask me why.

All in all the time consuming was equivalent to the classic technique but I liked it more.

Final conclusion: The Direct QAYG method is useful to solve the problem of quilting a big quilt with a small sewing machine and to organize the piecing-quilting steps so that not waiting too much the latter.

It was fun to use it. 

Trying other QAYG methods is only a question of time and opportunity. 

Have a beautiful day to you all! 

I am linking to Linky Tuesday

                       Fabric Tuesday

                         Let's Bee Social 

                         TGIFF - Devoted Quilter

                         Finish it up Friday