the quilting part of quilting

I'm so excited about the enthusiasm over my book review project!  I'll be trying to post one every week or two until I've done the titles on my bookshelf.  I really appreciated the feedback I received about what books to do next.  Right now, I'm planning three ahead, and this is what I've got lined up:

1. Modern Quilts from the Blogging Universe
2. Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pederson
3. Geared for Guys by Emily Herrick

Other stuff you guys suggested:

• a way for you all to get involved, like maybe a central place to link to your blog when you write a serious review.  I'm totally down with this!  I just need to figure out how to make it easily navigable.  I've been planning a proper website (around the blog) so that tutorials, reviews and such are more easily cataloged.  I think once the website launches, I can set this up.
• my personal opinion.  On the website I'm planning on making recommendations for specific categories and subcategories.  I'm not sure if I'll go further than that.  I imagine that what is appropriate and useful will reveal itself.  I guess that I just don't expect that what I want or need in a book is necessarily what YOU want or need, so I'm happiest to just describe what is in the book and who I imagine would want/need it.We'll see!

However, ya'll know that I love to talk about process, so since I just reviewed Free-Motion Quilting by Angela Walters and then went on a quilting binge to wrap up some works-in-progress that were due (at magazines, or as gifts), I figure I can talk about my process in choosing and using quilting designs.

Quilting is probably my least favorite step in the process of making a quilt.  It's also, probably because I send quilts out pretty often, my biggest problem growth area.  I just haven't put in the time on quilting that I need to in order to have those gorgeous even stitches and in order to get onto the quilt what is in my head.

I tend to like quilting that is somewhere between an all-over pattern with no relationship with the patchwork and a one that is micro-coordinated to the patchwork.  Usually, this results in either a fairly minimal all-over design (see the The DoublePlusGood Quilt, Miss Stinky's Particle Board Cabin) or for a long time I have favored straight-line quilting (The Full Stops Quilt, The Green Quilt, The Kelp Quilt).  It probably helps that these designs are pretty straightforward requests for me to make of my lovely local long-arm quilter, Bernie.

I also tend to send things out to the long-arm quilter when I'm short on time or when I've made a large quilt (and most of my quilts are large!)

I recently realized that I need to do more of my own quilting.  Why?  Because I came across this work in progress:

I made this quilt top in 2005.  2005.  2005.  I f**king love this quilt top and it hasn't been quilted because I haven't developed the skills to execute what is in my head.  ARGH!!!!  Time to grow some ovaries, slap that darning foot on my little Janome, and get to work!

I had a few lap-sized quilts in need of quilting, so I decided to woman-up and quilt them myself.  Unfortunately, I can't show you the quilt tops (gifts and such), but suffice it to say that I wanted something non-swirly and non-straight-line and moderately dense.

My go-to-spot for browsing free-motion quilting designs is The Free Motion Quilting Project from Leah Day.  More than 365 designs being given away for free with pictures and videos and explanations?  Yes, please!  They are also, very helpfully, categorized in multiple ways, including difficulty, design type, and directional texture.

I decided to practice on a small quilt I anticipate donating to charity.

This is the Basic Chevron design.  Pretty easy.  I got much better as I went, so I was glad to be working on a practice quilt as I got the worst of the wobbles out of my system.

I then slept on it (your brain processes skills as you sleep, making you much better on the start of day 2, than you were at the end of day 1.  Seriously, here's my reference: RadioLab. Yay science!)

On the second quilt, I decided to use the Square Spiral

Again, it was a bit clunky at first, but I practiced a bit, slept on it, practiced a bit more and then was competent enough to do it on a "real" quilt.

My practice quilt doesn't look half-bad though!

The actual quilts were similar to the practice quilt in that they had a columns of patchwork and I wanted to quilt in a way that went with the columns. Like the practice quilt, there are two passes of the quilting within each column. I tried the chevrons wider, but I lost control doing something that wide on my machine. I think I am going to invest in some grippy gloves and see if that helps with control. Leah Day sells quilting kits with gloves and sliders, so I'll pick one up from her, since her shop is how she supports her awesome website.

I think I'm going to finish upthe patchwork for  my log cabin quilt next, but in the back of my head, I'm contemplating how I will quilt it and also the Halloween Quilt.  I actually, think I'm pretty close to settled a design for the Halloween Quilt---varying sized squares filled with the matrix design.