Sunday, February 5, 2012

Why can’t we just start out perfect?

12Feb4Ginger Ginger by the light of my Janome! She and Rusty have been real little pests lately! Sitting on my quilt sandwiches while I’m trying to practice, or trying to snag them as I move them around through the sewing machine. They’re behaving more like gremlins than assistants.I guess they’re behaving like the adolescents that they are. Well, that’s a habit that needs to be stopped.

I found the yellow Northcott fabric that I was looking for in Kamloops. It was a lot pricier than it was online in Toronto, but the store had a sale on – buy one meter, get one free. So, the price dropped drastically. Darn. I was sort of looking forward to a little more on line shopping. It’s not like I don’t have enough fabric, but… but… So I satisfied my need by buying more needles and thread and just a little bit more fabric.

I haven’t been on my blog a lot this week, but I have been at my sewing machine, keeping the Free Motion momentum going with my first feathers a la Diane Gaudynski over at SewCalGal’s blog. Oh, are mine ever bad, and I’m not brave enough to show them. I have a day off tomorrow, so I’ll be Practising some more.

12Feb4leah Last week, Leah Day challenged us to Free Motion along straight lines. At first I thought she was nuts! I have a walking foot that does that for me! But she gave several excellent reasons for learning how to straight stitch with FM. Everything looks easy when the experts do it. As soon as you try it yourself, you realize they’ve been doing it for a long time. Of course, it was early in the morning when I did these, and I wasn’t in a very good mood. I copied the pattern out of a book by Gwen Marston and … and then copied it onto the fabric of my quilt sandwich. Changed the needle and thread and away we went – weaving back and forth over the lines like a drunk driver, taking the turns too widely, and doing a poor job at keeping the speed consistent. The second practice wasn’t much better. I improved on my first mistakes and made others. I picked this variegated thread because it was a nice, thin Aurifil, but the dark bits really show up my mistakes. Oooops. Practise, practise, practise. I can hear my music teacher’s baton hitting the metal music stand.

Until next time,

2 comments:

  1. You're being a bit hard on yourself. These look good! You're doing as well as anyone else! Besides, light fabric and dark thread show all of the imperfections the most:)I have begun quilting my first big quilt for my daughter. Its a twin size. There are many mistakes, but you know what? If you look at the big picture,it doesn't look so bad! Plus, if anything else, I'm gaining experience.

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  2. Agree with danih03 - way too hard on yourself. Samples look good. Not exactly an easy motif you have chosen. Long lines - easy to trail off a bit.

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