There have been a few things going on recently so I was looking forward to a day of solid sewing at my local Modern Quilt Guild. Sarah Ashford was running a workshop for us on walking foot quilting. This was inspired by seeing Jacquie Gering at Quilt Con and also her book Walk: Master Machine Quilting with Your Walking Foot and Craftsy/Bluprint classes on walking foot quilting. We all prepped a series of 12 1/2" quilt sandwiches ready to be quilted. I took some blocks which I'd originally sewn for 500 Quilt Blocks and added borders so I had a green colour theme and was ready to quilt with an Aurifil 50wt variegated thread.
Sarah is always very well organised. She had inspiring samples ready for us and within the hour we all started with this curved grid which starts off with a horizontal and vertical free hand curved lines drawn with a Hera marker; the rest is echo quilting where the foot width is the guide. She gave us lots of tips about stitch length and how to progress and the whirly grid came together without any difficulty.
I then started on a grid which I ended up completing at home. The original had diagonals crossing through the rectangle corners but I thought that might be a little dense and fight with the pinwheel so left it as a rectangle grid.
I spent most of my time trying out a boomerang variation but places my block on-point when I started planning my quilting lines. These were marked with the Hera marker like the other blocks but a little harder to mark as the lines and the points I was aiming for kept moving off the block. It was worth sticking with though because once it was marked up it was quick to sew and I'm very happy with the end effect.
It was a lot of fun to play with walking foot quilting on small samples in a room with everyone doing the same. The sort of activity I would never do at home and it fired up my enthusiasm for the quilting process. There was a room full of busy happy quilters sewing away! Sarah always has lots of plans and besides teaching and writing, I know she has been working on a Great British Quilter podcast for some time and the first episode is now available!
Episode 1 features Jo Avery of My Bear Paw and I've had a preview listen! It is a lot of fun, just what I want out of a podcast focusing on British quilters. Jo is so chatty and shares her creative process with such enthusiasm and Sarah's hosting keeps it all on track whilst the interview sounds like a talk between quilty friends. I cannot wait for more!
I find I can manage some quilting in small blocks like you did but really struggle to get the same results on real quilts, I find that the stitch length changes and I never manage to move it around that easily. x
ReplyDeleteoh thanks for the vote of confidence Kerry! And I love your cuvrved grid quilting. I'm not much of a walking foot quilter but I fancy giving that one a go, it looks so good!
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