Monday, February 25, 2019

A New-to-Me Skill

Back in January I pieced this top featuring a cute Paddington Bear print. It's been on my to-do list for quilting this month.

Because of the bias plaid, I didn't want to just give it my usual walking foot diagonal grid treatment. I'm not a proficient FMQ quilter - about all I can handle is meandering or stippling. Sometimes an actual motif is needed. This quilt needs something in the bear blocks, maybe a spiral. 

I sketched a spiral on paper and practiced stitching on the lines onto a scrap fabric, using the stitch regulator on my Bernina.  It went better than I expected. I stitched over the paper spiral three times. Then I carefully pulled the paper off the fabric to use it as a template.

The paper came off in two parts, two halves of the spiral.

I traced one of the parts onto template plastic and cut it out so I could trace around it.

Then I carefully marked around it onto the quilt, using a water-erasable marker.


Carefully, slo-o-owly, I quilted on the marked lines.

Not bad! I can do this! I quilted spirals in all the bear print blocks. (I had previously quilted in the ditch around all the blocks to stabilize the quilt sandwich.)

My spirals are not perfect, far from it. There are lots of bobbles and wobbles. But after the quilt is washed and crinkles up I think it will look all right.

Whoo-hoo! As my little grandson says, with great excitement in his voice, "I did that!"


Monday Link-ups:
Small Quilts and Doll Quilts
Em's Scrapbag
Love Laugh Quilt


PS -Thanks to all who responded to my request for weight-to-yards conversion info yesterday; some are no-reply bloggers whom I can't reply to personally.



10 comments:

  1. Wowser. You went to alot of trouble for your spirals! The joy is in pushing yourself to new things. Nice finish.

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  2. Great idea! Your spirals look great in this adorable quilt. Woohoo!!

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  3. Those look nice, and I especially like how they trail into each block! Good for you for figuring out how to make the swirls happen. I've done similar things and am generally happy with the results. Because I tend to make similar size blocks for most of my donation quilts, I have taken my paper templates and transferred them to plastic. That way I have them on hand and don't have to redo templates each time. :-)

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  4. The spirals look great Jan! Is this a donation quilt? You went to a lot of work making the spirals! I only straight line machine quilt but I need to be more adventuresome like you!

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  5. Looks great! Neat idea for templates to make it close to perfect. I would have just free-handed it and boy! would it be free-handed! Hahaha!

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  6. What a sweet quilt! The spiral is perfect. A friend just picked up the book Walk, it has quilting lessons designed to help you use your walking foot to great effect.

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  7. Your spirals look great! Clever way to make a template, too :)

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  8. Your quilting looks great! Thank you for linking up with the Peacock Party.

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  9. Oh too cute! Love your quilting motif!!

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