Friday, February 7, 2014

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:
Machine quilting stippling
 
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.

 

10 comments:

  1. Thank you for showing us the close up pictures! I now understand the technique,
    Thanks,
    Esther
    esthersipatchandquilt at yahoo com
    ipatchandquilt dot wordpress dot com

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  2. The stippling looks nice. You learn from each project you make. Great job!

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  3. I love this technique! And the stippling works well.

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  4. I think the quilting design does have a bark-like look. Having the quilting go faster is nice, too.

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  5. Didn't work on any of my current projects today--started a new one. It's from a pattern, but it is one I bought in Columbus and have wanted to do. It's a February wallhanging. I got the background pieced--all from the stash! It is great to spend a snowy day quilting.

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  6. I enjoy seeing your techniques. This looks beautiful.
    best, nadia

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  7. Is it hard to quilt through all the glue? Does your needle get gunky?

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    1. Actually, that's not a problem at all. I put the glue on in a thin layer, not really chunky. The only difficulty with the quilting is how the presser foot catches the edges of the snippets.

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  8. That looks awesome! What a cool technique!

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  9. wow loving your work, im stopping by via grow your blog a little late i know but only just found it, cant wit to see more of your work ,jannette

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