The kitty quilt is officially finished. I actually have two. Why two, you ask? Because the fancy free-motion presser foot I got for my sewing machine proved to be a little harder to use than I thought it would be. You can plainly see where I started (dark blue) and where I finished (dark green) in the picture below. It’s totally jacked on the blue, right? And not all that fabulous on the dark green, if I may speak honestly. As you can see, I’m ripping out some of the stitches so that I can salvage it and keep it as a back-up.
After finishing the first attempt, I did more research. All the information I’d read about this fancy presser foot talked about how easy and awesome it is. The video tutorials showed people easily moving the material around and making very beautiful and super cool designs. Easy, right? Wrong. It was far from easy. Of course, all the tutorials did say to practice before you started on your “real” project, but I was not going to waste my time. I mean, the video said it was easy. Fast forward to you looking at the above picture and seeing the hot mess that is the dark blue stripe. Rough.
In questioning Mr. Google, I found out that apparently the process doesn’t have to be as free-wheeling as I assumed. I found some handy dandy implements that help with the quilting process.
1 - Quilting stencils. A lot of people don’t just wing it when it comes to quilting something. There are actually stencils you can use to draw a design on and then just sew on the drawn lines. Duh. Not rocket science. Instead of buying a ready-made design, I decided to get some plastic graph paper and my sister-in-law created a stencil for me. Thanks, Tate!
2 - Quilting gloves. For serious. I didn’t buy these either. I improvised. All the ones I found online look like those tube socks that have grippy rubbery spots on the bottom - the non-skid stuff. Well, they are gloved versions of that. I realized that when I took one of the five reformer pilates classes I signed up for on Groupon (that’s how they get you!), they forced me to buy these sock thingies. They’re totally stupid looking and I was pretty miffed that they forced me to buy them as they weren’t cheap. And dumb. BUT, they have those non-skid pads on the bottom. I knew I wouldn’t be using them for another hellish pilates class, so I broke them out to use for quilting. I’m sure I looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care. I felt like a very resourceful problem-solver. Although, the fingerless part kinda negates the benefit. In looking for pictures, I just stumbled upon this little tutorial. Son of a BEE STING!
After the above “cheats,” it still wasn’t easy. It was easier, but not frustratingly hard like it was the first time. After I showed Ryan the finished product, he did admit that you can see my flubs, but they weren’t as bad as the insanely obvious ones from my first attempt.
Next stop…full-sized quilt! Gulp.
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