“Daisy Chain”, which I shared process pictures of back here, has been finished for a while. I have been waiting for pictures of the quilt in its new home, but I keep forgetting it even though the new home is just downstairs.
Our daughter and I are both very happy with how the quilt turned out and it fits just as well on the young ones’ wall as it did on my floor while taking pictures.
I worked quite a bit on the quilting design before I started quilting, using the YouDoodle app as described in this post. I worked both on a single block
and how to chain the blocks together. It’s such a great app.
This was my first time free motion quilting such a big all-over design – which was quite hard work as I had to make big movements. I did not mark the top, so no flowers are the same even though the number of petals is constant.
I wanted the quilting lines to be as fat as possible, and found an old black spool which would do the trick. It was rather hairy and kept breaking, but I did not give up even though there was times when I wanted nothing more. I was prepared to clean lint out of the bobbin area every hour or so, but there was surprisingly very little lint. Still, all that extra work with the thread breaking made me throw the spool out as soon as I finished quilting so I wouldn't be tempted to use it again.
The design shows well against all the fabrics,
and also quite well on the back (bobbin thread from the huge cone in this post). I found this bright and fun fabric in a bag in my studio and thought it would be perfect for such a bright and happy quilt.
I used a glue pen to temporarily attach the sleeve to the back while hand stitching it. The glue pens have spared me from unpicking thousands of basting stitches since I discovered them. You’ve got to love that.
A little warning though - it dries white, not clear. How I know? Take a guess.
The edges were a bit wobbly as I didn’t quilt all the way to the very edge, but they have already straightened out a bit while hanging.
The quilt measures 64”*48” and has my favourite low loft polyester batting which made all the moving around more bearable.
Thanks for stopping by!
We have been enjoying a bright and sunny weekend in the middle of allergy season, and it felt ever so good to get inside and close all the windows when the boys left. It's still hot, but far less itchy, and I cannot imagine stitching anything by my sweaty hands tonight.
I was meeting up with my guild friends on Wednesday, and one of them brought a wonderful quilt of which she will make a variation for another friend. She was wondering how it would look if she changed up some of the colours, so I shared my favourite creative app with her. I love this app and use it a lot when sketching out quilting designs, so I thought you too might find it useful.
The app is called You Doodle and has lots of uses; this tutorial is for sketching quilting designs on a block or a top. The app comes as a free version and a paid one and I have it installed on both my iPhone and iPad. As I use it often, I chose the paid version to avoid the ads, but the free one is just as good for this purpose.
Take a picture of your block/top/part of top using the phone or tablet on which You Doodle is installed. I use the iPad as a camera all the time, particularly in the studio. The bigger screen will of course make sketching easier than on a smaller.
Click on the You Doodle icon and this screen appears. You can draw anything on it, make notes and sketches, but for this tutorial we’ll be drawing on top of our photo. Click +
Click Draw on top of a Photo
Click Camera Roll
Click the photo which you’ll be working on. I’m using this picture as an example.
You can rotate and crop it as you wish; I rotated mine. To crop, slide any of the marked dots on the 4 sides. To rotate, click the circular arrow on the bottom.
Click Done when you’re done.
Click the paintbrush
and chose a colour that will show against your quilt. I chose white. You can also choose a thicker line by sliding the Size button. Click Done when you are finished. You can go back here any time you like to adjust your settings, just click the paintbrush.
Use your finger to draw anything you like on your quilt. You can go back, line by line, anytime you like by pressing the regret button.
Save any keepers to your camera roll by clicking the icon on top left, and the file type you want. I use jpg.
Click Camera Roll. You Doodle creates a new image every time you save it, so you can keep as many variations you’d like without changing the original photo. I love that!
I will typically try out different ways to stitch quilting lines to get as few stops and starts as possible, and to see that the quilting lines are close enough to keep the layers together. I’ll save my sketches, press the regret button and start over again.
To upload another photo, just start from the very beginning by clicking the + and follow the steps.
I think I’ll actually use this quilting design on my table runner which is next in line for quilting.
You can also use the app to try out different colours (which was what I was showing my friend), but there are not too many neutrals to choose from a quilter’s viewpoint. It will still give you an idea though.
When colouring, I choose a bigger size on my line. I have chosen black on this example,
and added some white dots afterwards. Just touch the screen lightly, and you’ll get dots. Rather handy if you're thinking about adding buttons or paint. I added white on the ground too, but it does not show very well on these pictures.
It looks quite similar to the original Make a village table runner from back here.
I no longer use Paint to draw on my tutorial photos; I now draw my yellow circles in You Doodle and upload them to my computer all ready to post.
Thanks for stopping by and have fun playing with quilting design ideas!
