Feb
04
17
Whew! This has been a long and highly stressful past few months. Much of it was spent out of town caring for ill parents, and a fair amount of it was spent feeling crappy with respiratory tract infections from being so tired and sleep deprived. We are finally back home and both our moms are doing well, so we can breathe a sigh of relief. Yesterday was the first time I’ve free motion quilted since mid-November, (if you’ve taken a class with me in this time, I’m not counting classes) and it felt so good to be back at my sewing machine once again. I am hoping to spend a lot of time in my sewing room over the next couple of months! If you’ve emailed me and haven’t heard back, it’s because my life has been on hold while caring for out-of-town family. I am way behind on every part of my life and it will take me awhile to get caught up, but I’m making progress.
I have a few photos of things I worked on last November just before my life took a tumble. One was a Christmas-themed table runner I made:
The “framework” for the quilting was all done as ruler work. This part went very quickly and this next shot shows one of the reasons why. If you are a lazy quilter like me, ruler work enables you to get by with minimal marking. You can see this in the photo below. Those temporary blue dots are the starting and stopping points for the curves that I wanted to create using rulers. That long straight blue line is simply the “midpoint” line that keeps me on target for using that as my midpoint:
Here’s another after I was a bit further along:
Notice that many spaces are simply filled with small featherettes. If you go into the design with the goal if completely filling the area with a featherette, you end up with symmetric-appearing featherettes, even thogh they aren’t truly symmetric. Here’s a closeup shot of a center section:
Do you have a little sense of deja-vu when you see this table runner?
If so, it’s because I made another table runner using this same pattern earlier last fall. Here’s a shot of it:
Both are quilted using ruler work and featherettes, but the quilting on each one is different:
Filed under Free Motion Quilting, ruler work on a HDSM, Store Updates.
Patsy, so glad you’re back after such a stressful time with loss of father-in-law and then this nasty bug wreaking havoc. Your work is, as always, beautiful and inspiring.
Patsy glad to have you back and sorry for the stressful time you have had.
Patsy, glad your life has settled down again and your home. Sorry about the loss in your family. It’s good both moms doing well and I hope you are feeling better…
Wow… Christmas table runner is gorgeous… so pretty and I hadn’t noticed it’s the same as the other project. Be well!
We are all so glad you are back at home and ready to jump back into your beloved FMQ.
Both these table runners are stunning! Thanks for sharing your step-by-step technique since I am getting [back] into ruler quilting.