DQS 10 v1.2 - Butterflies

I don't know if I'll ever get over the nervousness and butterflies in my stomach feeling every time I start to free motion a quilt that does not involve stippling/meandering. There's is a certain safety net in doing a simple all over meander in that you really can't completely trash a quilt top. It never fails though, every time I set out to do something beyond a meander I hesitate. "What if I mess up the whole quilt top?" "What if it doesn't complement the piecing?" and all sorts of other wonderfully negative comments flow through my brain. Inevitably I put off the quilting for a few days. Finally I work up the courage to stare the quilt in the eye and show it who's boss.

The first few minutes are agonizing as I struggle to find my rhythm and loosen up. Eventually "it" just comes together and the quilting flows like I actually know what I'm doing, but really I'm just flying by the seat of my pants. Somehow or another I end up with something that really surprises me {and Mr. PD too!}




Of course every little flaw jumps out at me. The little snag, the slight hesitation in the curve, the skipped stitch (grr I hate those), the abrupt stop when my hand ran into the sewing machine, but all those little things are what drive me to keep going, to do better, and to one day master the whole machine quilting thing. In reality it's the part I love the most. One day I plan to be as good as Diane Gaudynski, Carla Barret, and Sally Bramald (to name a few of the many women that inspire me.) I just have to remember what Diane likes to say "Keep quilting - your work gets better every day!"

I'm about halfway done with the quilting on my DQS 10 and I'm falling more in love with it each day. I showed it to Mr. PD for his nod of approval and all he had to say was "seems like an awful lot of work for such a little quilt!" He liked it {of course he has no choice but to show approval} but I had to explain to him that just because it's a small quilt it doesn't make it any easier or less work. I don't think he understood why I would put so much effort into such a small piece.

Well dear partner I hope you like what you see so far.

~Norma

DQS 10 v1.1

I got a little bit more done on this doll quilt today. Yesterday I got as far as piecing the Dresden wedge. Today I picked out the background (Kona Cotton in Charcoal) and used my Accuquilt Go 1.5" strip cutter to make quick work of cutting my scraps into perfect 1.5" squares. It literally only took me like 10 minutes to cut 70+ squares. Gotta love time saving tools!




Hopefully I can get the borders all pieced tomorrow. I still have to attach the background to the Dresden and figure out what I want to use for the center. Right now I'm leaning towards a Charcoal center because I love the graphic look of it thus far.

~Norma

If you want to read my Accuquilt Go review and tutorial on how to cut squares with the Go see this post here.

Doll Quilt Swap 10

I've lost count... but I think this is either the 3rd or 4th round of the Flickr DQS I've joined. It's one of my favorite projects of the year. This time around my partner was proving to be quite tricky to sew for. I finally settled on a design after months of throwing ideas around in my head. Usually by this point I've already had a good start on the doll quilt, but this time around I haven't had the same drive to get started. I think it has something to do with the whole baby growing deal. Ok, so it's probably has a lot to do with that plus being pretty busy with my shop, the kids, and church responsibilities.

This time around I think it paid off to procrastinate. As I was doing the daily purging of my google reader I somehow or another {you know how it goes, one link leads to another... and half an hour later you're there} I found this cute little quilt and then I hopped on over to the flickr group and was smitten by everything everyone has made.

So yesterday I pulled a stack of fabrics, mostly from my Jacob's Coat pile and today I got busy cutting wedges:




Hopefully I'll be able to piece it all shortly.

~Norma