Machine quilting on a small machine... improv style

I love to do piece work, but I also love to machine quilt. "N" is for Needles!
 Seeing the thread create texture is exciting!
This week I zoned out and let my inner child choose patterns to quilt in my woodland quilt. There is a video of how I began the process at the end of this post.

I made a backing of scraps, and there was no real need to pin baste, so I started with the walking foot.

 After it was all evenly quilted I wanted to make sure it was very flat and at right angles before binding. I laid it on the cutting mat grids, and spritzed it with water, patted it into place gently...

making sure it really was even by using the ruler...

and left it to rest, dry, while Milo and I took a walk

It was dry, flat and I only needed to trim away excess batting and backing before binding. I do love sewing the binding to the back of a quilt, so I am doing that tonight while watching tv. Both quilts have binding on, and only need the hand work to finish them. 

this is how the binding will look

I am considering adding in these laser cut owls... what do you think? They take attention away from the abstract background but I kind of like the whimsy... I think I'll add them on after it's all done.

After doing all the walking foot quilting, which makes using specialty threads easier for some reason, and is very fast, fun and easy to do, I went in to quilt details with free motion. Willy nilly decisions. 

Go with my whims. I repeated the leaves wherever I could...

if you enlarge the binding photo you'll see other places I put vines and leaves. I did spirals, and cross hatching, and in general filled in all the spots with free motion.

The ocean quilt was done the same way, first walking foot quilting as much as I wanted, then free motion around motifs.

Here it is all quilted with the binding sewn on ready to pull to the back and hand stitch. It's tough to show you quilting details because the prints hide it, except in a few places...

Howdy 'gators! what is this drink called???

Much more quilting eventually filled in around each motif  

again, lots of free motion work was done later to fill in around these quilted motifs

Now and then I used a programmed stitch to follow a curve. 

and that spiral stitch is my very favorite stitch. I tried to mix rayon thread in neon colors, with metallic madeira in bright greens purple and pinks as shown on the (previous post. )

Oh my, it felt great to be working again. I squeezed it in amidst frantic house hunting as our rental has been snatched out from under us. I'd call this medicinal sewing. Better than antidepressants.

Milo often stood beside me looking out the window by my machine. My latest book on disc (lost lake) played keeping my mind busy while my hands remembered how to guide tiny feathers and leaves. 

I found myself enjoying my basket of cutting tools. Mary Englebriet fabric, painted red cutlery basket, beads, and palm trees meant to hang on a curtain... all hold necessary sharp tools.

I'm currently working on the little tryptich which is bordered in a delicious turquoise Ginny Beyer print scrap, and getting lots of free motion work now.

 As I moved it around to work on it, I found myself turning it on end to display instead of the horizontal orientation I used the whole time I built it!

 I had a poster in the old house that said "Get out of the way and the art will make itself" 

Yep.

Now for your zen moment of the day. My husband tried to video how I do improv quilting with my walking foot, the echo quilting with curvy lines. I have a knee lift but because my injury gets as inflamed as my hands are in the video, I just lift the presser foot by hand to turn.

It's hard to see the stitching  unless you go full screen and you  may need to go to youtube to go full screen. Hey! We ain't professional movie makers here! (if you hover over the youtube screen, an icon at the bottom right will make it full screen)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tyeB6JT2Ts

Showcased on https://www.sewcanshe.com/blog/2018/4/13/friday-spotlight-leeannas-incredible-woodlands-quilt 

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