March 27, 2013

WIP Wednesday

I'll start with the good news this week. I have finished blocks 14 and 15 of my Golden Album Quilt by Jinny Beyer.
Block 14
Cutting the pieces for block 14 was challenging because I had to match up the pattern for the 4 pieces that make up the bottom of the T. Stitching it together went fairly well though.

Block 15
Block 15 has curved piecing. I had read about doing curved piecing, but I don't know if I had ever actually done it. I was pleasantly surprised by how easily it came together.

Then I tried working on the FMQ for my scrappy log cabin quilt. That did not go so well.

See all that crazy eyelashing? I had about 2/3 of a block done by the time I checked the back and discovered this mess.
 

I stared at it for a while, willing it to suddenly look beautiful and perfect, but it didn't happen. So, out came the seam ripper. It took much, much longer to rip out those spirals than it did to stitch them in the first place. I will say that I wasn't overly pleased with the shapes of the spirals as I was stitching, so it's not like I was ripping out work I thought was beautiful from the front, but still...

As far as I can tell, the eyelashing seems to happen when my hands are out of sync with the speed of the machine, mostly when I'm stitching slow, but still moving my hands fast. Sometimes I just can't keep my needle speed up.

I'm going to try again either tonight or tomorrow night...hopefully that will go better. I also have most of the 73 pieces cut out for block 16. Yep - 73 pieces in one block that finishes at 10 1/8". I'll have pictures soon.

I'm linking up at Freshly Pieced again today.


4 comments:

  1. Very impressive all that fussy cutting. Bump up the speed of the machine. Pedal to the metal! - my FMQing (and driving) motto. Every once in a while and definitely every time I start or change a bobbin, I'll pause my quilting and feel the back. Some people use mirrors. This eye lash problem is my favorite FMQing to pick out. Everything else is such a time suck.

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  2. The blocks look great...and so sorry about your FMQ. I don't like when that happens. Thankfully, it doesn't really happen much on my Bernina. It's not that I'm a better quilter...I think it's just a better machine...more merciful.

    Hope you get it fixed soon.

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  3. I agree, the blocks do look wonderful. I'm sure you'll get the FMQ part figured out soon - on the bright side, at least you get to practice your spirals more! :0)

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