10/17/19

The Days of Whine and Quilting

Yesterday, I started quilting the Wine Country quilt in earnest. I'd spent the previous day trying to figure out how to quilt grape leaves for the grapevine. Also, I was looking for pictures of grape leaves. I found quite a few, and it seems the leaves of grapevines show as much variation as any other blooming things in a garden. Toward the end of the day yesterday, I noticed I needed look no further than the border of my own quilt.


I'm using a Gutermann 50 weight thread on top, because that's what I have in my stash. I had two used spools of this, and I've already finished off the first one. I'm working with the second one, and I've ordered one more. Ordering another ensures I'll have plenty of thread on this one remaining spool to get through the whole quilt, if you know what I mean.


On the bottom, I'm using a gold Essential thread from Connecting Threads. I believe this also is a 50 weight thread.


So, I practiced a little more on my practice piece, and then I flipped the excess backing fabric over to the front and quilted a couple of motifs on the excess batting to check my tension.



Starting with the embroidered blocks, I had in mind to quilt "vineyards," and I was inspired by our trip to the actual vineyards this past weekend. I figured echoing lines going in different directions to emulate the Dundee Hills where Oregon's wine country is most productive.


Okay, so here we go. I like the looks of this, and it's pretty easy to do. Also, I'm stitching in the ditch around each block.


Then, I was ready to start quilting the grapevine in the borders and sashings around the blocks.



It was only a few minutes before Sadie showed up to make sure I had everything set up correctly.

Is this bobbin winder thingy loaded propurrly?


And what about this quilt suspension system. Are you making good use of this?


I encouraged her to sit in the chair beside me, but she found that discouraging, and left the room.

My motif isn't really large enough to fill the space I have unless I quilt it ridiculously big, and so I filled in some of the empty space with more grape clusters and those curly-cue things you see on the vines.


And...I don't know...Maybe I should have done something a little more symmetrical, but I'm going to continue on.


Uh-Oh. Here comes Big Foot.


He likes to scratch his chin on the machine, and once thoroughly scratched, he too left the room. Quilting is boring for cats.


I was having trouble with the occasional birds nest on the quilt back, which interrupted the flow of things. I can hear it when it happens, and so I was having to stop occasionally, cut thread, and fix things. That's where the "whine" on the Wine Country quilt came in.


Later in the day I thought to use my TOWA bobbin tension gauge to check the bobbin tension. Usually I do this with every bobbin change, but I forgot that step for most of the day yesterday. This morning I did a search to see exactly what causes birds nests while quilting, and it seems the bobbin tension might have been the issue all along.

Hopefully, today's quilting will go more smoothly. For yesterday's effort, I finished a row of blocks, and I'll get at least another row finished today. I figure a row a day and a day for the border should have the quilting finished by the weekend. This quilt was started in May of 2016, and so it will be good to get it into the finished pile.

That's where my day is headed. What does your day hold?

9 comments:

Lynette said...

Hey, nice UFO work going on at your place. :) I really like how you're quilting this. The echoes in the blocks and the vine drawing in the border perfectly evokes vineyards. But, Gah!! I sure hate it when bird nests plague me. I hope that has worked itself out for you today! My day - more of the paper piecing and assembly work on my king-size Dahlia quilt happening. Once I have this last one pieced, I'll go back to Heather's Dahlia and quilt that up. I was absolutely insane to start in on four dahlia quilts for a family project, but that obsession did the job of getting me through a depression period and re-interested in my normal quilting interests and other regular Life pursuits and interactions. Much cheaper therapy than a psych!

bcarlf said...

I really like your wine quilt, especially the embroidery. I also admire your patience with your beautiful kitties. I might be afraid they would accidentally upset the apple cart or some such thing.

Unknown said...

I am having those awful birdnests this week as well (sigh). A long overdue cleaning of my bobbin area seems to have done the trick! Hope so as I'm beginning prep for a quilted bag class coming up in 10 days out of town.

piecefulwendy said...

Well, this post took it's merry time dropping into my inbox. My physical mail is slow as mud, so I why should I expect my inbox to work any better? Haha! I like what you are doing with the wine blocks. Your two helpers are looking good! I hope you celebrated with a little wine for work well done!

djquilting said...

You are really fearless in choosing your quilting designs. What you have done so far looks so good. I hate tension problems but Towa really helps me.

Judy1522 said...

I think you are doing a great job on the quilting design. I think sometimes you just have to jump in and get it started like you have done and it ends up looking beautiful.

SJSM said...

I like the "hills" in the blocks. It does evoke wine country. Today a friend wants to start a sewing project after a 30 year hiatus. She has a grand baby coming and wants a personal gift for the dear one. She liked the minky blankets I have made for baby gifts so we were on a search. I had checked over the last two weeks without finding a local source and we live in a very large population area. Finally, a place was found in Soquel of all places. They almost had the complete line of Shannon fabrics minky. Score! We found everything she wanted. Now to get her using her machine once more.

I’m glad you found the problem and resolution for your birds nests. Birds nests and wine don’t pair well together, though, as you said whine and birds nest are a perfect pairing.

Kate said...

You picked a great pattern for the quilting. Hope things ran much more smoothly after the tension check.

quiltzyx said...

Oooh, I love the "grape fields" you did in the wine country blocks! Perfect!
Glad you seem to have gotten away from the bird nests now.