Day light saving time and rain

At least daylight saving time only comes twice a year.  Twice too many by my thoughts.  When I had young children, they were disturbed by the change and bed time and morning became difficult times for weeks after the change.  Now it is dogs who have to be re-educated to morning starts.   Bed for them is tummy full after dinner, soft music and Mom reading.

It would not be so bad except it is r a i n i n g again today.  This is a repeating performance around here for the past couple of weeks.  The performance is getting a bit wearing.  The cats do not like either daylight savings or the lack of sun.   The fire will not even light as the atmosphere is bearing down all around.  This is good day for hiding in doing something creative and not looking outside as well except for dog walking.  This ritual cannot be denied.

What is bright in spite of the icky rain is a quilt I am doing for charity.  It will get auctioned off sometime this year.  Such quilts are fun as I get to choose the design of the quilting.  No overall which is ok but can be boring.  Most hateful of overall is meandering.  My humble opinion.

This is the second quilt in which I have created a unique quilting design in the borders. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of the other one but do have my drawings so I can recreate it.  Draw, draw, draw before turning on the machine.  In both cases there were designs in at least one of the fabrics that I could use as a starting point.  If you look carefully fabrics provide some interesting designs which can be simplified to become quilting designs.  This one does have to go back on previous stitching so it is not something quickly stitched but it does make for interest in the borders.  Using something that is fairly dense accomodates borders that have a bit of 'give' in them.  Denser quilting takes up the slack. As well, tacking down the edges of the quilt with a curvy line that goes in and out of the edge helps with providing a big of give room with edges that want to 'wave' a bit. Here is a picture of part of the border(s) on the quilt.

I am using a blue/turquoise thread, Aurifil 50 weight, so the stitches are not too distinctive but with the travelling they do have definition.  You can guess what part of the fabric inspired the quilting.  Striking a balance between the beauty of a quilt and the stitching is important I believe.  I consider this to be  'quilters embroidery'.  It provides definition but does not takes over.  I love to see a quilt side on to light so you can see the hills and valleys of the quilting.  After all the quilt is the star in most cases unless you are competing for quilting work.

Time to get to work.  The fire is finally going and providing some warm light of comfort to the grey day.   This border takes patience but I think it is worth it.

Have a good day.  

Problems and solutions

Well, if you do long arm quilting for anyone be it for a business or a favour, you will encounter problems with quilt tops.  There are many.  I just finished one that presented a lot of challenges some of which I simply could not fix.  Hand quilted squares that are squared up by pulling the threads up to shorten a side are simply not something one can fix.  A bit of stretching as you quilt can make sure you do not catch the fabric but the unevenness will remain.  The same is true for blocks that fold over the seams because they are too big.

Most of the problems I have coped with before but have not done it while floating a quilt top.  So I pressed the top very carefully and steam helped a bit but in the end some things are there forever.  I had not floated a top before but it is a great technique and less time consuming and less physical as you do not have to pin the top and roll it on the front.  I am all for less time and less physical.

I followed some suggestions for tacking down the quilt edges as you go  Oh the internet is a wealth of information for a quilter. Across the top and down each side was the recommended method.  .  Or up each side to avoid the ruching that can occur when the machine pushes the fabric ahead of it. You baste at each roll of the quilt.

Even a small amount of push can distort a border especially if the border is not sized to the quilt and is waving like a mad person in a crowd.  This border was a wavy as an ocean shore.  It was not fitted to the quilt top.

So, faced with a problem I tried to think of a way out of the predicament.  I smoothed, pulled and smoothed and pulled but the waves kept coming but I began to  realize if I smoothed from the inside to the outside of the border I could get places of relative calm i.e. in the direction of the waving.  Here is a little presentation attached Simple pictures to try to illustrate my words.  I should have taken pictures but it was not my own quilt.

It worked.  The problem almost disappeared.  So in the future I will baste across the borders; not up or down or across the bottom.  Top is ok to baste normally but the sides and bottom present challenges.  But if the top will not cooperate this would work as well.  You can stitch over the basting but it pulls out easily.

What is taking longer now is the pinkie that the machine stitched as I tried to smooth one of the squares which was shoe horned into the quilt.  No blood on the quilt though.  :)