Friday, October 19, 2012

October Bonus for the Free Motion Challenge

    The October Bonus by Diane Loomis  for the Free Motion Challenge is on her  trapunto technique.  Be sure to visit her site.....she does wonderful work.
  
I have done a similar technique before, but thought I would give this a try anyway.  Diane  provides a pattern for a small flower and a feather border.  I nixed the feather border for me, as it was so small.  The flower I thought would work on a doll quilt.  So gather the needed supplies and off I went.
   I decided to do a small practice flower on white muslin first.  This is the first layer of poly/cotton batting stitched with wash away thread on the muslin.    I cut away all the excess batting and then made a regular sandwich of backing and backing for the final stitching.

    I used a light blue isacord thread for the final stitching .  I did 3  echoing lines around the motif and then stippled the rest.    The stippling took forever.....but the results were great.  I trimmed it to 4" by 6" and plan to finish off the edges with a satin stitch.   A perfect little piece to enjoy.  
  
  Then  for the doll quilt.....I had pieced together some large squares from the stash and used them to border a wider purple strip.  I actually stitched on 2 flowers in the center purple strip.  I just used echoing lines to fill in the rest of the purple.   I am not as crazy about the echo lines.  I think I much prefer the stipple....yet for a doll quilt, it works.  
        The colors are truer in this photo, and the relief from the stitching shows well.  This is a great technique to experiment with and I bet feathers would be fabulous using it.  So maybe another time, I will try that.  For now, I am quite happy with this little one.
      Stitching this motif was easy and hard.  The easy was doing a better job staying on the marked lines.  Practice does help after all.  The hard....there is a lot of back tracking to get in all the details, or you have to break thread and move to another area.  I tried both ways.  Back tracking is still difficult, but I am noticing some improvement.   I give the lesson 5 stars....lots of details and good information shared.
   Don't let this bonus material get by you.  Be sure to check it out.
Happy stitching.
   

16 comments:

Janet O. said...

You did a great job, Debbie. I looked at this tutorial, but I'm not sure I'm ready to try trapunto. But yours looks beautiful and it is tempting!

Impera Magna said...

Wow... great job! I do so admire your stick-to-it-tiveness! You are making wonderful progress...

Juanita said...

I am impressed by your ability to follow all the instructions for this trapunto challenge and come up with such a beautiful result both in the practice piece and the doll quilt! And you are doing so well with your free motion quilting.

Nessy said...

The trapunto in your quilt doll look very beautiful.

Queenie Believe said...

YOu did wonderfully with this technique, bravoooo!
Have a great day.
Always, Queenie

Debbie said...

Thanks, Queenie, you leave the nicest comments, but I can't reply to you as you are a no-reply blogger.

Lynne said...

Wow! Stunning! That is a technique on my "must try" list!

Barbara said...

Very pretty work.

Nicki said...

Oh Debbie, you are doing so very, very good on this monthly challenge. Your trapunto is just great. It's so pretty on the doll quilt. Another happy little girl will receive one of your special quilts.

Pattilou said...

That looks so great! I've never done any trapunto and I willing to try it--I'm hoping my machine is soon fixed so I can continue with the FMQ challenge. I just got a beautiful piece of marbled fabric for one of the extras and I'm itching to try that technique!

Diane Wild said...

Your trapunto looks wonderful. I found this tutorial very easy..well, almost easy. The hard part was finding the water soluable thread. But the lesson itself was very friendly. Both of your projects are beautiful.

quilter99755 said...

Actually, I love both of yours. The allover echo quilting is not as distinct, but still nice. I wish I had done a couple of echo quilting lines around my design before doing the grid. Oh, well, next time. The tutorial is almost harder to read than it is to do. I'm working on my second one now.

Cheryl said...

I love your trapunto, the doll quilt and sample are just beautiful, you simply amaze me at all the work you can do and so much of it, I love to make lots of things but never have time to stay with it like you do!

Mary Ann said...

Absolutely beautiful - a doll quilt is a fantastic idea for this!

Marjorie's Busy Corner said...

Beautiful work

Raewyn said...

Your trapunto is great - hasn't this all been a wonderful learning curve!!

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