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Friday, May 13, 2011

Romancing the Rose - A mile-marker finish :D


The Rose is without an explanation; She blooms, because She blooms.      
 Angelus Silesius


I love this little quilt. Well, it's not particularly small - it's a perfect sofa cuddler.  :)

Everything about it makes me smile. Named after the Northcott charm pack that I had to buy when I only went into the shop for thread, I pieced the top back in 2009, mixing it with fabrics from my stash. I was really pleased with how it turned out.


Not wanting to ruin it with my then-nonexistent machine quilting skills, it hung on the rack for TWO WHOLE YEARS.  sheesh, already!!   ;D

So, when I needed a quilt to take to my appointment for practice time on the long arm machine last month, but had no time to piece a top, I decided to sacrifice my precious friend. 




My brain spun non-stop all through the night on how I wanted to do the quilting. Spent a fair bit of time the next day doodling on piles of printer paper until I knew exactly what type of design I wanted to go with. 

Figured Patty would get a chuckle out of my intent to do a custom job with separate borders rather than starting easy with an edge-to-edge, and she didn’t let me down. She laughed at me.   :)  Hey – if I’m always bringing complicated jobs for her to do for me, why should I go easy on myself?!  I ended up getting to learn how to turn the quilt after it was mostly quilted so I could keep the long border work intact.


The inner free-motion design that I developed turned out to be the BEST motif for a beginner!! It’s so forgiving! Seriously! The mistakes actually make it look even better, because roses are all different from each other, and petals do all kinds of things in real life  Now, this is my kind of thing!!  woohoo!  Why didn’t I try this AGES ago?  ;D




I found the heart-shaped ivy leaves in the dark green border to be easy and relaxing.


In the red rose border, the little chalk dots I had marked every however-many inches were the perfect aiming spots for the line of free-motion roses I wanted to do there. It did throw me for a bit of a loop to figure out how to run that pattern upside down when I got to the bottom, but orienting the doodle paper on the quilt next to my sewing area helped a lot. I managed. It came out just fine. 



Started out like these. . .
Ended up like these!
The one thing that did NOT come out just fine was the intended figure-8 scrolling in the double skinny border, next to the trellis pattern.  ummmmm.   yeah.   oh, my, that one was funny.  I just couldn’t get those to work! They got wider and wider and wider apart, 


and when I got to the bottom, I couldn’t remember how far apart they’d spread, so I made them EVEN WIDER from each other!  lolol  It was pitiful.  Got even funnier after I rotated the quilt to do the sides of the borders.  :D   I’ll have to chalk some spacer lines next time I try that motif.









Well, I did know up front that there was no way I was ready to try straight lines on the
longarm, let alone diagonal ones – and REALLY let alone a 1-inch crosshatching – 

So Patty let me take her cone of thread home to do that part with my walking foot on the tabletop machine. 

She even loaned me her handy-dandy crosshatch stencil to use with my Pouncer. Worked perfectly – it centered just right with minimal fudging. I thought it was really fun the way you just go around and around and around the quilt in a big zig-zag and the grid fills itself in as you keep going. . .   
(so easily entertained sometimes)





The back looks really fun. Well, until I looked at those seriously goofy loops again. . .    I was actually going to frog them out and redo that border set on the tabletop, but Scott said “No way” did he want to hear me whining about it the whole long time it would take.  (hehe) 

So I compromised and did some free-motion first aid:  I sewed more loopdy-loops on the yellow border to at least fill in all the crazy spaces. They’re fairly messy, but I do like it better than it was before. Patty laughed at me when I took the thread back and showed her my “fix.”   :D   Well, yeah – can’t let go of ALL the perfection over-obsession at once!  Maybe on Learning Piece #3. . .





So, finally – after two whole years – Romancing the Rose is quilted! Put the label on yesterday morning just in time for Show and Tell at guild, and this makes finish #14 of 2011~! I am excited.   :D











Check out the many incredibly creative quilts people are featuring at Amy's Quilt Festival, Spring 2011.  :D

24 comments:

  1. Your quilt is beautiful and your fmq is just amazing. I can't believe it was really your first attempt. And to know that you did it all on a non-commercial machine is even more amazing! Great finish and a totally beautiful job!!!!

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  2. Congratulations on another beautiful finish. I loved hearing about your FMQ adventures. I really have to get brave enough to have a go. Thanks for sharing this quilt with us. Happy Festival!

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  3. Wonderfully quilted!!! I love how you dived in and absolutely breathtaking! Em

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  4. very nice. hmm i wonder if i have a quilt to share. thanks for the link. oh, and i have a contest going on at my blog~only 4 signed up so far! it's for $20 gift cert.
    butternutstreet

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  5. Don'cha love when you go in for thread and find perfect fabric too??? hehehe Beautiful!

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  6. Great finish! Fourteen, huh? You have been one busy quilter!

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  7. Your quilting is amazing....I can see why you love this quilt!

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  8. Love the quilt and your quilting.

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  9. A beautiful quilt and your quilting is great. Thanks for sharing the humorous story of its development.

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  10. A quilt that you have quilted yourself is worth 10 quilts that are quilted by someone else! Good on you, I think it looks fantastic!

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  11. Your quilt is lovely. Great work with the FMQ, too!

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  12. I love the story behind this quilt. And you reported it all in such good humour. Your result is amazing and gives me encouragement to try, but not on such a big project. Well done.

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  13. Great story and quilt. Thanks for sharing it.

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  14. Wow! It's beautiful! I can't believe you did that quilting your first try! If you saw my first one you would understand why I gave the quilt to my hubby to use at the hunting cabin! I really enjoyed this post ... thanks for sharing with such joy!

    Thanks also for visiting my blog and for your lovely comments on my quilt. I'm having a blast doing this festival ... never heard of it before.

    Nancy aka Quilts Sew Shabby

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  15. it is hard to believe it is your first try at long arm quilting, it looks amazing!
    thanks for visiting

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  16. I have been dying to take a long arm class. I am such a free motion chicken. What a gorgeous job quilting. It gives me hope!

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  17. Very nice~! It's really a lovely quilt. I like all the rich colors. I am impressed with the way you dove in and really did a good job on the longarm! When I started, I thought of it as handwriting . . . and I stayed in second grade for a couple of years~! My first quilt was cut up for a dog blanket. See, you did great!!

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  18. Love the gorgeous quilt, the story, and your humor - I think your quilting looks fantastic!

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  19. I would love to be able to free motion quilt. I'm hoping to try just a simple loopy design on my next quilt. The quilting you did complements the quilt, so pretty. Still can't believed you learnt all this in 2 years? And managed to quilt so beautifully on your first attempt at the longarm? Wow. Thanks for sharing.

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  20. Wow!! I'm really jealous, your quilt turned out great!! I just haven't gotten over the free motion hump!! I actually over think all machine quilting. The perfectionist in me is really keeping me from completing some projects myself. Thanks for stopping by my blog.

    Darlene at I Quilt Scarlet and Gray

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  21. You have done a fantastic job, and your quilt has turned out great. Don't worry about the things you don't like so much (like the figure eight border), in a few years time you will be looking at the quilt fondly remembering the learning experience.

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  22. Great that you got to learn to fmq on this and it turned out so beautifully! The quilt design reminds me of bowties or butterflies.

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