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Thursday, July 17, 2014

Challenge quilt complete

Well I finally wrapped up my Michael Miller challenge quilt in the nick of time and...it came in second at my guild meeting!!!


Here is our pretty glamour shot. So many people came up to me and said they loved the kitty. This is great because I have really been wanting to do more realistic animals/plants/portraits in quilts. I have bought numerous books on this topic and it's great to know I'm headed in the right direction. I can't wait to make more.


Overall this quilt was a real challenge for me. On the quilting, I decided to not rip out all my work but instead just rip out a few of of worst bulges and smooth them over. While it's still not very good, it's at least passable when you look at it from afar (someone at the meeting asked me if I had used a longarm! Hah!) 

Of course the troubles didn't end with the quilting. I went to iron out my frixion pen markings, set the iron on a really low setting, but it wasn't hot enough. So I cranked up the heat and out of nowhere the iron got gunk all over and stained my top!


I thought I had melted the mono thread but after talking to many other quilters I do not believe that was the case. I am honestly unsure what caused this. Perhaps some rogue fusible web or spray baste?


There's a shot of the stain. As you can see, it somewhat blended in with the grey of the background! It turns out a tide pen worked to get rid of it. (How DO those things work???) More disappointing, I forgot I was using a scrap of polyester batting and the heat from my iron permanently flattened the center area. I love the loft of polyester but it's too hard to try to remember not to iron it!
But in the end it all turned out alright...or at least well enough. I learned a lot of lessons from this challenge I am glad I participated.

In other news, my sewing area, which used to look like this...

...now looks like this!


We have become proud first-time homeowners and are currently in the moving process.


Wish us luck! I get an entire bedroom to myself for sewing! It's the second story window you see in the upper corner of this pic :)


Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Time for some Truth Tea

Okay guys, its Molli Sparkles TM Truth Tea time!


Molli Sparkles

I started quilting my Michael Miller challenge quilt, and I think my quilting is pretty darn bad. I am really frustrated with how it looks. It's not done, but I stopped because it was looking so bad. The goal was to fill all of it with the echoing lines. 

Do I rip it out, or soldier on?


I was trying to be all "modern" by doing lines. But lines are not my thing. Look at all that puckering. And the world's worst spiral. Sigh.

OH to make it worse I left white thread in the bobbin. On a black background.


Eek.

So on the "don't bother ripping it out" side, we have the fact that this is just a challenge project, made almost entirely with free fabric, that I wasn't intending to keep anyways. I was going to try to post it on etsy but with this quilting I would donate it to the cat rescue for a fundraiser instead. 
We also have the fact that ripping it out would take forever. 

On the "definitely rip it out" side, we have that it looks pretty darn awful and I am frustrated because I really liked my top and now it looks like crap.

On the one positive note that I have to share, I like how my thread painted kitty turned out. This guy would be unaffected by said potential seam ripping.



PLEASE weigh in. I would appreciate any and all advice.