More Equipment

There must be something seriously wrong in my world, because when I had the opportunity of 30% off everthing at my local fabric and craft superstore yesterday I could only think of a single item I wanted to buy. And they didn't have it.

My friend V dropped in at lunch time to share a cuppa and entice me on a shopping expedition. "All I want is quilting gloves", was my reply. V was kind enough to do a detour to the local Quilting Store on the way home, so I came home with these.  

 The 20 cent coin is there for a size comparison. These are the smallest gloves I could find. They seem to be a perfect fit. I've been told that the cheap rubber-tipped cotton gloves you can find in the supermarket work just as well as the ones designed for quilting. That's all very well for those with longer fingers than mine. They're no good for me. Even the small size leaves me with excess fabric at the end of my fingers--that's no good for precision control. Are you wondering what these gloves are for? They're to help me keep an easy grip on the fabric when I do free-motion quilting. Now I have everthing I need to get practicing. Time and concentration I need to supply myself. 

Free Motion 101

Yesterday I went to my first free motion machine quilting class. Here's how it started.


















Stitching front to back and side to side to get the idea of controlling the direction and length of stitch. My next challenge was to write my name. Then lots of stippling practice. Stippling is a continuous meandering curved stitch path and I can't say I'm thrilled by it, but at least it's a way of training the right hand-eye coordination.

Probably the most useful part of the teaching came before all this. It was about setting myself up at the machine to make the task as comfortable and stress-free as possible. To that end I have a pair of rubber-tipped cotton gloves on my shopping list for today--they made a huge difference in helping me move the fabric without straining. And I'm going to have to have another look at how I have my machine set up in the studio to make sure I can sit easily while I sew.

More Team

I'm stitching down the binding on the Sussex Neighbourhood House Raffle Quilt. Yesterday I picked it up from the office, where my friend V had left it for me. She'd promised to do a bit more quilting after J and I had quilted around the main blocks and L had stitched in the diagonals. I was so thrilled to find she'd done this: There's a free-motion floral-star motif in each of the friendship stars and a matching flower in the plain blocks. I was already quite pleased with how the quilt was coming along, but this has added a whole new dimension to it. V decided to keep the borders fairly plain after all that activity in the centre. So the quilting is done and the binding is on. Later today I'll pass it back to J. She's volunteered to stitch down some more of the binding over the weekend. All that will be left to do next week is the label. It's been prepared already with all the important information, but I'm tempted to pretty it up a bit.

The official launch will be at the House Birthday party on Monday 9 August, but raffle tickets are on sale already. And there's a whole other team of people from the Neighbourhood House managing that side of things: counting and labeling tickets, keeping lists, counting money . . . Did I mention I love working with a team!