Mini Round Robin June Reveal

It is reveal day for the Mini Round Robin!!!! All four of us have finished adding the first round to the centre blocks that were mailed to us. We had till the end of June to add our touch to them and we all had them done early. You can read about the centre blocks and rules here.  Julie sent me her block. My block went to Sandra. Sandra's to Tish and Tish's went to Julie. Go take a look at their blocks, I'll wait for you to get back.

Julie's block

This is Julie's block and my starting point. I wasn't sure what I was going to add. Time to audition some potential ideas. I have a container that I keep bits and pieces of things in. The container has things like HST's in various sizes, four patch, HRT's, strip set pieces, flying geese and etc. You get the idea. Right?

audition take #1

First up strip sets and HST's. Nope! Not doing a thing for me. Back to the container and pull out some more stuff potential good ideas.

audition take #2

I saw a winner in take #2. Did you see one you liked? Now how to take that idea that was floating around in my mind and add it to Julie's block.

more auditioning

You saw that half rectangle triangle in the lower part of take #2, that was going to be my starting point.  I knew I wanted to frame Julie's block but didn't want to do a traditional square in a square look .I made three more HRT's , they were 3 1/2'' by 6 1/2'', trying to pull the colours from the centre block and keep things cohesive. Next up was adding the 3 1/2 '' squares that were needed to make this work. Out came my container of scrap squares. Another winner is found. I sewed a 3 1/2'' square to each HRT.

y seam starting point

To make this work I was going to have to make a dreaded y-seam. I placed a dot a 1/4'' from the corner. The red arrow is pointing to the starting dot. The stitching starts exactly at the dot leaving the 1/4'' from the corner unsewn. The other three sides can then be sewn on in the typical manor of edge to edge until you reach the starting point.

coming to the final seam

When you reach the final side keep the first seam folded back so you don't catch it in your seam, sew off the end. Flip the first piece over and sew from the dot to the edge. A successful y-seam.

finish sewing the first side from the dot to corner

Hopefully the pictures helped explain how to do a y-seam better than my muddled wording.

Now for the reveal. I bet you want to see how my idea looks? 

the big reveal

I like it and I hope Julie does too. This was fun and a little scary at the same time. But I'm glad we are doing the round robin. I can't wait to see what addition Sandra made to 'Oops'.

I will be adding the direct links to the posts with the rest of the round robin reveals, as they become live. 

Julie of Pink Doxies

Tish of Tish's Adventures in Wonderland

Sandra of mmm!Quilts

Linking up to Main Crush Monday

Guild BOM

I designed the BOM for my guild for the 2015-16 year. This was month we got to see the tops that the participating members finished. You can read more about the design here and my finished quilt here.

my finished version of the BOM

Not everyone participated but those that did I think enjoyed doing the BOM and liked their respective finished versions.  At least I think they did. I was definitely looking forward to seeing their results. The varied colours gave each quilt its own personality.

Want to see some? I know you do, so here goes.

she used all scraps and was undecided on the borders.

all blues 

blues and browns

she fussy cut the borders and sashing

greys and yellows using FQ's

love the purple sashing

a nice mix 

this one was quilted and bound

she added on point four patches to make the quilt longer

I loved them one and all and I admit to feeling pretty proud. 

This was our last meeting of the year, we take the summer off and our next meeting isn't until September. That means I have a couple months to design our next BOM. At this point I'm not sure what to even start designing. Any ideas? 

Did you know Craftsy is having a summer sale?  Save up to 60% on kits & supplies with the sweetest sale you'll see all summer on Craftsy! 

Craftsy summer sale.

I have Julie's block done and ready to go to Sandra for the Mini Round Robin. Look for the post coming on June 30th to see what idea I settled on.

Have a fun filled Sunday!

This post contains affiliate links and I may be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links, thank you.

'Pinky' is Finished

The free motion quilting woos are still not resolved. You can read about them here. My machine has been sent to the hospital for adjustments and fine tuning, No word how long the stay will be, but oh boy do I miss her. I am going to be getting myself a 1/4 inch foot for my older Singer. She doesn't have a computer, doesn't do any fancy stitches but she does sew.

She needs a good cleaning and then she'll be ready to purrr along

Now back to Pinky and one or two make that a lot of photos. With all my FMQ struggles I didn't do as much ruler work as I had planned. Good thing I occasionally fly by the seat of my pants, as I threw out the plan and just went with what the quilt wanted. Ready for some pictures? Here goes.

straight line ruler work and some big e's and l's

I did some straight line ruler work in the HST's and centre of the block. In the pink strips I did e's and l's. I have discovered that pink is almost as hard to get good photos of as red. I played with all kinds of settings and editing.

curved line ruler work

This block was quick to do. A little curved line ruler work in the centre and loop de loops in the background. 

wavy line ruler work in the plus piece

It is harder to see the ruler work in this block I just did a wavy line a 1/4 inch in on the plus piece. Some feathers and line work without a ruler complete the block.

I like how this block turned out

More ruler work in centre square and also the white around it. I seem to be on a feather craze lately.

the connector block

The small curls in the white really don't show on this photo.  The back doesn't show real well either. Trust me they look good though.

back of the irish chain block

I took a least a dozen photos of the back but the stitching doesn't show up to well on the backing fabric I used. The backing is by Benartex 108'' wide backing called Tonal Vineyard. This is the first time I have used a wide backing, I will probably use one again it all just depends on what the quilt wants pieced or wide.

quilted and binding done.

I like how the connector irish chain blocks frame each block.

hearts and more feathers

I quilted in hearts on both corners on the top and bottom of the quilt. In the heart I did crosshatch ruler work. And lots of feather plumes in the borders.

applique using the 'Crafted Applique method

For the applique I used Lara of BuzzinBumble  'Crafted Applique' method you can read more about it here. In all there are 80 little hearts, 16 flowers and 160 inches of bias vine in the borders.

too big to get a full shot of the top

The sun was trying to shine through the quilt. Being height challenged takes a little more work to try and good a good place to hang the top and get a good picture of it.

hanging in the tree

Just had to have at least one tree shot. I know that 'Pinky' will be giving my granddaughter lots of quilty hugs and love every night she snuggles under her.

This quilt after washing finished up at 68'' by 89 1/2''. A good size for her bed.

Now I need to concentrate on what I am going to be adding to Julie of Pink Doxies centre block for the 2016 Mini Round Robin.

Julie's center block

I have a few ideas just need to settle on one.

That's what I've been busy doing the last couple weeks. What have you been up to?

Free Motion Woos!

My new machine a Pfaff 4.5 and I have been going through a love hate relationship. A lot of not so nice FMQing was happening over here. I wanted to do some ruler work with her and I'm sure at this point she was taunting me with 'You want to do what!' ' I don't think so'.  Shredded thread, broken thread and as if that wasn't enough skipped stitches. This all started on Thursday.
My granddaughter has been asking every time she's here is 'Pinky' done can I take her home yet. Let me introduce 'Pinky' to you.

'Pinky' as named by my granddaughter

I needed help! First line of action call my dealer. She gave me some suggestions, so I sat down at my machine and made adjustments. Little did I know these were to be the first of many and many hours involved in all the adjusting to come. Her suggestions of a different size needle, thread tension adjustment didn't bring much relieve. Next suggestion bring the machine and samples. So off I went I took my favourite thread Superior's So Fine along too. Three yes that is three hours later, I left her place things were better but still not right, she sent her own personal  machine along as her machine was stitching  better than mine, not perfect but better.

skipped stitches

By late Saturday I was still not getting consistently good results. I kept adjusting thread tension, re-threading the machine and bobbins. Pulled out some Aurifil thread to see if my machine liked it better. I can say this much she didn't like one brand better than the other. The worst of the shredding thread and skipped stitches happened when I had it set for Spring Foot free motion quilting. I needed this setting for my Westalee Ruler Toe Foot.

settings

There was a lot of testing going on. I was back at it Sunday most of the day, this machine was not going to get the best of me, at least I was hoping not.

testing

By Sunday night I was googling Juki machines I was almost at my wits end and was out of ideas. Maybe sleeping on it another night would help.

Monday morning I decided enough of this there must be help out there. Somebody must have some other ideas. I belong to a facebook group 'Free Motion Quilt Along with Ren'  maybe just maybe I could get some help. Within a half an hour I had more suggestions and HOPE.  Why oh why didn't I think of this sooner. I spent enough time googling for possible solutions and getting no where. Oh and the  Pfaff manual isn't worth a plug nickel. My dealer had calls into tech support both in Canada and the US.

more stitch testing

Adjust thread tension again, use a sharp but smaller needle. I was using a 90 as that was doing the best, I changed it to a quilting 75 that helped some. 

thread tension

Lower the pressure foot. But the best suggestion of all use a Single Hole Plate. Sent an email to my dealer she had one in stock, just in case you were wondering she is a 25 minute drive from me. 

Picked it up on the way to hubby's cardiac rehab. I was hoping this was the answer.

and more testing

Sandra of mmm!quilts sent along some effin FMQ fairies. Thread tension compensation one more adjustment added to the ever growing list.

more adjustments

Ohhhh I was in FMQ heaven a combination of everything worked. I was afraid to shut the machine down for the night.

FMQ bliss!!

Tuesday she is still working no shredded thread, no broken thread, no skipped stitches. YES!!! Pinky might actually be finished and have a chance of being loved by a sweet little girl. The FMQ fairies did their job!

My hubby says I can be a little stubborn. He may be right, don't tell him I said that.