Thursday, October 30, 2008

Tops and Scraps

This is the red/white/blue quilt top I have been working on. Some of the fabrics I just bought are in it! I am going to add a border, maybe two. Then it will be done and on its way to a vet somewhere in New England.



The other day I read about this idea on someone's blog.. I'm sorry I don't remember whose. Was it Cheri of Jovali Quilts? It was someone who had attended Gwen's retreat (I'm envious.. can't wait 'til I retire so maybe I can go, too). The idea was to make a quilt using Floor Scraps. I loved the idea and made one from what I had worked on that weekend.

You don't get to see it yet. But here is what happened when I was trying to quilt it today. The stitches kept turning out way uneven. Can you see some that are way larger than the "normal" ones? (You might have to click on the picture to enlarge it.) This happened on different quilting patterns, so it's not just this goofy up and down line pattern. Does anyone have a suggestion? I couldn't get it to work properly. I re-threaded, changed the needle, tried different thread.. and still couldn't figure out why it kept happening. Maybe it's just my crappy technique. I'll keep plugging away at it, I guess, unless someone has a brilliant suggestion.



I plan to make another Floor Scraps quilt in the next few days. I love the idea! It's fun and it keeps my scraps from piling up too fast.

4 comments:

08armydoc said...

They seem to be happening as you're going in the same direction? Mine occassionally doesn't like to go "away" from me (*pushing* the quilt rather than *pulling*).
--> Double check that you're "pulling" and "pushing" with the same tension/stretch on the needle.
- Is your thread tension OK? (pulling up too much bobbin thread?)
- Needle OK?
- Does it happen more often when crossing a seam? (check top/bobbin tension)

- Leslie

Mary Johnson said...

Ami Simms does some off the floor borders in her book Picture Play quilts, she may not call it the same thing but basically she takes the leftovers from piecing I Spy type quilts and creates randomly pieced borders - I have to dig out my book and make a similar quilt one of these days.

http://amisimms.com/picplayquil.html

Magpie Sue said...

I've seen that Floor Scraps quilt on the other blog too (but can't remember whose!). I don't remember a description of how it came to be but I guess that part is pretty self-explanatory. I *need* to make one of those, even if my scraps are all over my table, not the floor...

Tonya Ricucci said...

the red, white and blue quilt is wonderful. sorry, no help with the machine quilting. Gwen's floor scrap quilts have been on True Blue Quilting Nana and on Comicbooklady's Quilt as Desired recently...