Friday, January 19, 2007

Quilt Lips

I haven't posted in a while. I was waiting to post once I had made some quilting progress. It seems lately that I take one step forward and two steps back and I just can't seem to make any progress.

I intended to quilt my gratitude quilt last weekend. I loaded the backing and batting, and top on the long arm and started to quilt last Sunday. I am trying to use up batting that I have on hand and so I had loaded Warm and White batting (from the Warm Company) which you all know has no loft.

The vision I had for the quilting would have benefited more from a quilt batt with loft. I quilted spirals on three of the blocks and started to meander in the space between the spirals to fill in the space and help define the spirals. I was using green thread that matched perfectly with the green fabric in the border but it did nothing for the red fabric. My vision was falling apart. I decided last Sunday night that this was a bad plan and it needed to be abandoned.

Last week I was busy in the evenings and I couldn't get back to that quilt. Last night I frogged all the stitching and cleaned up the threads so that the quilt would be ready for quilting today with a new plan.

I decided to choose an overall quilting design that was simple. I loaded a gold coloured thread made by Superior called, Highlights #703. I have never used this thread before and I wasn't sure what tension I should be using. After trying to quilt a row and having the thread break twice, which required more frogging, and further tension adjustments, I finally have a result I am happy with.

This gets me to the title of my post, "Quilt Lips". The quilting design I chose is called, "LIPS" and utilizes my Circle Lord Wave templates.

Now that I have settled on something I like, the quilting is going along quite quickly. I feel I am finally making progress after going backwards for a week.

14 comments:

  1. I love that design! It looks so crisp and clean . . . and well-executed!

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  2. I love red and green together and I think the flow of your quilting is great!

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  3. That is a nice quilting design. Certainly does look like lips.

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  4. Great quilting! Would you recommend Highlights thread? I use King Tut, So Fine, Bottom Line, and Rainbows, but haven't tried Highlights yet.

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  5. Very nice...great design for the quilt top.

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  6. It looks like the ripping out was worth it. I love your reusults now.

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  7. Love those lips - you now need to make a "Tulips" quilt...

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  8. Norma, so sorry that you felt like you were going backwards this week, and so glad that you stuck with it. Frogstitching quilting doesn't sound like fun at all. Your quilting looks great.

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  9. Very pretty! I bought this template recently along with several others. One of these day's I'll actually have to set up my Circle Lord and give it a try. Seems like it's never the right time to do it. I have so many of mine that are crying for Baptist Fans so that's probably the one I'll start with.

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  10. Infuriating when it takes a few failed attempts to get there but now you've got it right it looks terrific :o)

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  11. Gosh, I hate it when I have to rip out quilting but when your quilt is saying stop it's always best to listen. I love the new quilting - it looks like Christmas ribbons to me.

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  12. You seem to have found the perfect quilting design. The LIPS remind me of Christmas ribbons going across the quilt.

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  13. Great quilting design. It looks very soothing.

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  14. Very pretty! You picked the perfect design.

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