I posted this picture last night on Instagram with the caption, "The battle for my attention. Write a blog post, quilt dandelion, quilt whole cloth or piece a block. Who will win, who will lose?" I guess now it is time to announce the winners. Since I still had my walking foot on the machine and the block pieces already cut, I switched to my piecing foot and worked on the next block for my Modern Building Block quilt. I work on these blocks one at a time as little rewards to myself for doing something good. Technically, I hadn't earned the right to piece another, but rules were made for breaking. So in no time I had a 12 inch block to go with my two 6 inch blocks. Only 45 more to go!
Then I decided to give the whole cloth block quilt along another go. The next step was to fill the inside of our diamonds with feathers. If you've been to my page before you know I'm on the constant chase of dragon I call feathers. I wrote a post about it a few days ago that did not end as I wanted it to. So now I was faced with the beast again. The feathers that was stitched in our teachers blocks were more symmetrical and I tried very hard to accomplish this. I used my trusty Plexiglas to practice on my quilt top and a template she provided.
The first picture is one of my attempts to recreate what Ren had done. I just couldn't make it work. Mine kept looking like big fat sausage fingers. Then I tired free forming them, which seemed better but they seemed more like saggy sad hearts. So I tried more of the same but tried adding bling inside my plumes for a distraction. That just didn't feel right either.
Finally after more time that I would like to admit to, I found my flow and drew something that looks decent.
Once I started curving, the stem my brain was able to a line up all the dots it needed to give me something that looked much much better. Since I finally had a winner, I sped to the machine to get this knocked out.
In the instructor's block, she did a micro stipple in the areas outside of the diamonds. I will go on record stating that I am not the biggest fan of stippling. It does have a time and a place, but I thought about going out on a limb and doing a dense scribbling. I just love this dense filler, you can read more about it here. I think adding this dense filler really made the diamonds pop.
Now for a close up so that you can see the neat pattern created by the scribbling. I think it sort of looks like a delicate lace. Most people are like, wow, how did you do that? To some I say it is so easy, anyone can do it. To others I just smile and let them think I'm a genius.
Please ignore Oliver's tiny black cat hair if you see it. They are everywhere. |
8 comments:
What dandelion indeed I'm still waiting for it to be finished, I want to see what you decided to do for the quilting.
Love the wholecloth so far. I haven't done scribbling for years. I used to use it quite a bit. I'll have to re add it to the list of quilting I use. Thanks for the reminder
Love the wholecloth so far. I haven't done scribbling for years. I used to use it quite a bit. I'll have to re add it to the list of quilting I use. Thanks for the reminder
Curving the stem, great idea. fat sausage fingers, bahaha. I love reading through the process you went through. Something that clicked for me with feathers is what Angela taught: don't 'hit' the stem, follow it down a bit. It worked for me. This is beautiful and I'm off to investigate scribbling; you're absolutely right it looks like lace.
All that practice drawing really paid off... your feathers turned out great. I hope I'm as successful with the dragonflies I've been tracing over and over as you were with your feathers.
Your feathers look fantastic and the effect of the micro-scribbling is amazing. I can't imagine how much thread that must have taken! I really need to get started on the whole cloth quilt that has been on my to-do list for ages...
I've been a fan of micro stippling, but I really like your scribbling, too. It adds so much texture behind your feathered diamonds, which turned out great by the way.
I read so often that you learn fmq patterns by pracctice, practice, practice and more practice. You prove that this is rght. Beautiful feathers!!
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