Quintessence of Quilting

Now that I've come up with some awesome alliteration for the title of this post, I can get on with my day. You'll never know how long it took for me to come up with that $5 word. So anyway...I had in mind to do some McTavishing for the backgrounds of the embroidered blocks for Hocuspocusville, and I found a very good video on YouTube that helped me get off to a good start. If you like what I'm about to show you, you can find the video right here.

McTavishing appealed to me because I thought it would give the blocks that sort of "dark and stormy night" look. See if you agree. I don't know yet if I'll give every block a little extra motif, but I did for the four blocks completed yesterday. The first block might have been the first block embroidered for this quilt. It's called "Hester's U-Pick," and so I gave it some jack-o-lanterns for your picking pleasure.

These were stitched free hand using a tutorial by Lori Kennedy and posted on the Bernina We All Sew website.

Also, I knew the McTavishing would make it hard to fill in certain narrow areas, and so I quilted in a small spider and spider web amongst the branches of the tree.

Ordinarily, I might have skipped doing any quilting within the boundaries of the embroidery. These are large blocks, however, and so I needed some functional quilting to keep things from shifting around. Also, I noticed a little spot where the floss was kind of loose, and so I took a couple of little quilting stitches over the top to secure it a little better.

When the block was finished, it looked like this. Dark and stormy night? Wind howling? Spooks about?

The next block was the "Bubble & Brew Fly Through." This is one of my favorites on the quilt. I decided to give this one a witch on a broomstick. It's a different witch from the one I quilted into the setting triangles. This one has a cat hitching a ride and a full moon behind.

Here's where I ran into some trouble with my Press 'n Seal method of translating drawn images into quilted ones. It worked fine on that black fabric, but on this white background, any little bits of Press 'n Seal left behind were obvious, and I spent a long time getting all the little bits out. I have a solution for this problem though...read on. But first, Smitty was quite concerned about the cat riding on the broomstick. You can see his look of incredulity in the image below.

I will go camping and ride in your stupid RV any time you ask, but I will not...I repeat, NOT...ride on a broomstick. A cat's gotta draw the line somewhere.

When that one was finished, it looked like this.

You might remember that I put a little bit of orange in each of my blackwork blocks. Some might think the cat in this one should have been black. Black cats for Halloween, right? In this case, I made it orange in honor of our sweet George who died around the time I was stitching this block. If you don't remember George...

Okay, so let's talk about that solution to the Press 'n Seal problem. In the next block ("Morgana's Apothecary"), I quilted a ghost. But I didn't want to use Press 'n Seal again, and so I took a hint from my friend Robin who suggested wash-away stabilizer. I could draw the design on stabilizer and then wash or soak the quilt to remove it when the quilting was finished. Also, my friend Vicki suggested Sticky Fabri-Solvy which would work in the same way. Those are both good ideas, but I'm not planning to soak or wash this quilt since I might want to enter it in a show.

On the other hand...what about tear-away stabilizer? That could work. So I gave it a try, but found it just as difficult to remove as the Press 'n Seal. Also, the bits left behind were the bits where the traced line is found, and so it's made even worse because the line is showing. I'd tried to circumvent that problem by tracing with a yellow marker instead of a black sharpie, but that left behind a yellow line. So, what to do? What to do?

Well, first, I took out the ghost I'd already quilted, and realized that I could use the holes left behind to stitch in my ghost. And that worked beautifully!

So that left me with this solution. From here on, I'll trace the design on Press 'n Seal as before. I like the Press 'n Seal because it adheres to the fabric without pins or glue...although I still use pins just to be safe. Then, I'll stitch through the Press 'n Seal without any thread in the needle, just leaving the holes behind, and then go back over it with thread. That should work. I'll test my theory during today's quilting. And, yes, I realize that's pretty much how Pounce works, but I don't like Pounce. In my experience, the Pounce chalk brushes off before I'm ready, and then it's no use at all.

Okay, so on with the quilting. I gave Morgana's Apothecary it's own resident spider.

And I quilted in some furrows in the front yard.

When it was all finished, it looked like this. See the ghost flying out the window at the top?

My goal was to quilt four blocks yesterday, and I made it by day's end. The last was "The Potting Shed." There, I didn't have a lot of ideas about any added motifs, but I added a broomstick leaning up against the tree.

Also, I dangled another spider from the tree branch. When it was finished, it looked like this.

Here's how that quilting is looking from the back. Hard to see, I know, but that suits me fine.

So I'll get on with the quilting today. I'm hoping for another four blocks, but I'm also needing to start on my project for the newest Project Quilting Challenge. This week's theme is "Pixel Play," and I have a good idea in mind that shouldn't take too much time. More on that later.

Before I go, though, you'd be disappointed if I didn't show you this morning's inchy, wouldn't you?

So cute. Makes you hungry for spring, doesn't it?

Okay...onward. There's lots of sewing to do today, and no time to waste.