Quilting over snippets

I started the free motion quilting on Tree #4 today.  When I quilted Tree #3, it was the first time I had tried the snippet technique, and I had a lot of trouble with the pieces falling off while I was trying to quilt it.  Not fun!  So this time I really loaded it up with glue first.  I think it is helping.  The presser foot has caught a few edges and lifted them slightly, but no pieces are off of the quilt yet!

I gave a lot of thought to which quilting design to use.  On Tree #3 I did spirals, mostly because that's what Susan Carlson does in her Serendipity Quilts book. I thought the spirals were too challenging, between the snippets falling off and the difficulty of seeing what you are doing, giving the mish-mash of many prints.  And then, when you are done, the design hardly shows!  The snippets themselves are so busy. See what I mean?

So for these reasons I'm trying a variation of stippling that I think looks like bark for the tree. I haven't made up my mind about the background yet.
Here's a closeup:

 

Another benefit of this design is that it goes so quickly!  I'm linking up to Off the Wall Fridays and the Free Motion Quilting Project.

 

A productive week

My newest project, Tree #4, is coming along nicely.

 

I have all of the snippets in place, so now I need to go back and carefully glue down all of the loose edges. This is fairly time consuming, but I want to be thorough.  Last time, on Tree #3, I skimped on glue and the pieces were falling off as I was try to quilt it. Pretty frustrating!  Also, I made sure to use Aileen's tacky glue throughout, rather than the glue stick I tried before. Hopefully I'll be quilting it next weekend!

 

Here's what the sewing room floor typically looks when I'm working with snippets:

 

 

I find them everywhere. A few weeks ago I felt a scratchy sensation on my arm while I was driving, and I figured out it was from masking tape sticking a snippet to the inside of my sleeve. 

 

In other quilting news, I enjoyed seeing a selection from Quilt National at the Riffe Gallery last week.  The show is open through April 13, so check it out if you are in Columbus!