Saturday, July 27, 2013

FMQ Friday - Practice, Practice, Practice

Friendship Braid Prayer Shawl
This week started out like any other week - a full week of work - with a little quilting thrown in.  As I got started on the week working on the backlog of work from being gone the better part of two weeks, I filled in some time teaching myself a new FMQ skill - feathers.  I really want to use it on my sister's gift. 









I took little bits of time - while waiting on hold, or while puzzling out some great bookkeeping mystery - to sketch out what I was trying to do.

I've never done feathers before and really wanted something special for the large center square on the braided shawl.  When I finally felt like I had the motions down, as time allowed I started to practice on the machine.
Practice #1


Practice #2


Practice #3


Practice #4
 
I figured I was getting pretty good at this - the feathers are almost the same size, the travel stitching is fairly consistent, and I was feeling pretty good about my efforts. Just when I thought - by Jove She's Got it - my machine decided it didn't want to wind bobbins any more! YIKES!  I can't wind bobbins?  What is going on here?  What the heck am I going to do?

I put Sis's present aside for now.  I guess I wasn't ready for this challenge just yet. 

Because I had a number of white bobbins already wound up, I picked up the Christmas stockings I'm making for deploying soldiers as part of a group over at Missouri Star and started quilting on the outside pieces.  Basically doodling around.  Because the stockings are going to be fully lined, I quilted on the top and batting only.



On set is swirls and loops


The other set is outlined and loops

As I was quilting the second set with the outlined stars the machine was jamming and breaking thread.  I used every trick in the book I knew to power through the last half of the last one. 

 My trusty Elna is now at the machine hospital for diagnostics.  I sure hope it can be fixed!

Linking to Leah Day's FMQ Project
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4 comments:

  1. UnknownJuly 27, 2013 at 8:09 AM

    Hope your machine gets better soon! I'm practising feathers at the moment but they don't look anywhere as good as yours!

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  2. Stella NemethJuly 27, 2013 at 12:47 PM

    What a great idea for practicing on something real, but not something where a few mistakes will make you miserable. And the fact that the stockings have a shape you have to deal with, is also great for practicing.

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  3. AmandaJuly 28, 2013 at 3:23 PM

    I've never done feathers either...yours look great! (Also, you can pick up individual bobbin winders.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. LynetteJuly 29, 2013 at 11:36 AM

    Ugh! I hate machine problems! You really made a lot of progress with your feather wreaths before the glitches started up. I'm impressed, because I still can't do those at all. I wonder. . . maybe if I chalked in a smaller and larger circle as guidelines for the tops of the feathers, that might help me?. . . Love that stars-and-loops motif you have going on the one stocking. That would be perfect for the gentlemen's wheel-chair quilt waiting for me to quilt up.

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