Margo wrote:
Margo, that is exactly why I rejected the top design. Sashiko would be fabulous on that. It's the "hand" thing...I'll have to try it out on my practice piece.

BJ, I really like that top design, but can't figure out a stitching path to make it continuous for stitching by machine. That makes it a great option for hand work and would look awesome done as sashiko for you geisha! http://www.purlbee.com/sashiko-tutorial/

If you have EQ7 (or probably even an earlier version would also work), you can use it to help you decide on quilting patterns. I have just been doing that with my Geisha quilt, which has really been hard to decide what to do with it. At first I tried to print the stencil blocks (it comes with a nice set, but I also got Quiltmaker Quilting Designs) and found they just spread apart. But if you

1) make a "new quilt" with 1 to 4 blocks and no border
2) turn off the option that prevents you from filling the blocks with the stencil blocks and try stencils out until you have the one you like
3) rotate them until they work together
5) print a sheet to check it
6) then you can either cut the Golden threads paper into sheet sizes and print them through with a regular sheet of paper or trace onto the Golden Threads paper to audition on your quilt and subsequently sticky dot it on with one of several products that are not harmful to fabrics and quilt it.

You can then use that to audition on your quilt. Here are a couple of examples:
I rejected this one.

I am using this one.
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My 7 year old grandson loves to take the paper off after it is stitched (just a hint if you have some children around that might enjoy helping)

QuilterLynn wrote:
Lynn, I have to drive 6 miles to JoAnn! What would I do without those 40% off coupons? Many of my quilt books came from Joann's. The best advice I can give you about growing in machine quilting, is to doodle or draw, take your pencil and try out lots of little ideas. That will do a couple of things for you: you'll see pretty quickly what won't work, and as you draw out your designs, you'll be engraving the hand motion in your muscle memory so that when you do quilt, it will be there already. You will have worked out some of the awkward parts before hand.

I'm probably at the same spot with hand quilting as you are with machine quilting. Just learned to make the stitch, now to practice, practice, practice. Isn't it wonderful?

Kathy

Y'all are miles and years ahead of me and have such great ideas! I'm just a baby entering the 'quilting' part of the project having done ALL of my quilts by hand prior to this and doing very simple 'fluffy' minimal quilting. I'll probably eventually do heavier quilting but for now I'm really just learning in the phase of visualizing the design on that part of the quilt and figuring out how to do something other than 1/4 inch on the small pieced parts! ha

TQS is such a wonderful resource! Thanks bunches for all the ideas. JoAnns is only 2 miles from my house. ha ha ha

So you know where the commands are! I just think it's easier to "draw" with the pencil instead of the mouse when auditioning quilting lines. You just need to select the pencil tool or the straight line tool, choose the width of your line and a color that will show up on your quilt photo and you are ready to draw!

I learned to use Photoshop with the mouse. If I clean off my desk, I could get to the tablet. Photoshop is such a great program. I've used it primarily for photo processing.

Kathy

Kathy, if you already have a tablet and know how to use Photoshop you have amazing tools already!!

Margo wrote:
Oh, that makes sense. I do have a Wacom tablet but haven't used it much. Just make a layer in Photoshop and draw away!

No more shaking here so far. I saw that there was a small earthquake in Alabama too today, so I guess I won't be able to get away from them no matter where I go


Kathy

Oh, Kathy! That's scary! We had them when we lived in Alaska, and I never did get used to it!!

bettyannseeman wrote:
I actually read about it somewhere, and thought it was a good way to keep myself out of trouble. I also write "right side" on the side where the erasable marker is, so I don't turn it over and get residue from the marker on the quilt.

I just finished the quilting on the challenge quilt, having drawn out the sketches for the quilting on the freezer paper pattern.

We just had a little earthquake here, epicenter a couple of miles from the house, so I'm trying to settle down and concentrate on the binding.

Kathy

kathyst2 wrote:
Kathy, please don't be too awe-struck! What I do is really simple! I find it faster to do a small scale sketch on a photo of the entire quilt than try to work at full size during the early design stages. I find the clear vinyl a huge help when it gets down to more detail sketches, then I switch back to the computer to digitize motifs for my computerized long arm, but that's just because I prefer to do really heavy quilting and can't draw it easily with the markers.

The tip about the blue painter's tape is REALLY important, because those dry-erase marking pens do NOT wash out!!

The blue tape sounds like a great idea. I hope you didn't learn the hard way about the need for the boundry. Betty Ann

bettyannseeman wrote:
Betty, I do that also. I use the plastic they sell on rolls at Joann, that I also use for applique placement overlays. I put a border of blue painter's tape all around the plastic so I know where the edges are to avoid disaster with a marking pen.
I also sketch on plain paper, and then draw motifs out on paper. sometimes it takes me days to draw out something I like.
I'm just quilting a challenge quilt for the guild that is fairly small. I used freezer paper to make a pattern for it, and then doodled on the freezer paper pattern to find out how to quilt it. I look at Margo's computer renderings and stand in awe!

Kathy