Dawn, your drawing is spectacular. I truly hope you do get it transferred to fabric. Love to see the finished quilt. Let us know how you get it transferred. So much talent out there. Wow!!!

gmhowl wrote:
Thank you so much for the heads-up on this! What a great deal! I paid $15 for each DVD of hers at Festival.

Now...................I have finished my design, had it blown up a bit, copied 8 times, and have it put together. It totally amazes me that I drew this! It is 20" x 20" and will be finished off with a (Sharon Schamber's) corded binding! At least, that's the plan!





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I'm still not sure how to get this drawing onto freezer paper! I will go back over the previuos posts and see if I can figure it out! There is no way I am going to draw/trace this thing TWICE! I know I must have missed something somewhere.

Dawn
In beautiful Northwest Montana

Ladies, if anyone is interested I was looking at Purple Daisies website (Sharon's daughter's site) and they have under "Featured DVD Bundles" the set of (3) DVD's for $36.95. They are the same that is featured on TQS. The website is: http://www.purpledaisiesllc.com/The_Quilt_Show_Bundle_p/tqs.htm

Great work, I watched this last week and cannot stop designing, I am now onto my 6th whole cloth design and have also used the technique to design some quilting for on a Baltimore that I have to quilt next.
Jeannette

Unstitching, Margo? Why, I thought I'd just use Alex's stitch eraser! (I can't believe I was actually buying into that whole thing! The problem is,I was reading it around April 3rd and it just didn't register! Did I ever feel stupid!)

Thanks for the tip about stitching a sample first! Excellent idea!

Dawn
In beautiful Northwest Montana

Scoopie wrote:
Dawn, you are right on all counts! Yes, there is thread build up on a design like that. Yes, finer thread helps as does not stitching some of the lines all the way in.

This is another instance where it is worth your time to quilt out a sample with your fabric and batting and thread choices to see how it behaves before you stitch on the real thing that you have spent hours prepping! It's lots easier than unstitching!

Okay, I have finally had a chance to go back and review sections of the video. And, you are right! There are no directions as to how she tranfers the whole copy of the design to the freezer paper. She just says, "I've transferred my pattern onto the freeezer paper." And yes, it does look like she only transfers a little over half of it. I am assuming she will trace that half onto the quilt top, with some registry lines into the second half portion, pull the freezer paper, then realign it to the second half, then press it to the fabric to trace that second half. This would make sense, since she said it takes her 4 to 7 days to trace the whole pattern onto the fabric. It would cut the trace time onto the freezer paper by a little over half.

I have a question about the radiating lines in the center of the quilt, since I have them in other areas as well as in the center of my design. Is there a build up of thread at the center point? I have done similar stitching, and it sort of volcanoes! I'm assuming a finer thread will help, or not stitching some of the lines all the way in. Has anyone done this sort of stitching?

Dawn
In beautiful Northwest Montana

Marianne - I do my quilting on a domestic machine. For me, drawing the design doesn't give me what I would call "muscle memory" like it does for others. What it does for me is help me work out in my head what direction I need to move to make the design. For FMQ, this helps me with doing things like figuring out how to move out of corners or how to move around the design. (Just remember to not lift your pencil while drawing.) For things like feathers, it also helps with being able to visualize better where to move in areas where the foot gets in the way of the marked lines. I've just found that it has nothing to do with how I move my hands, but the movement of the line in the drawing.

Nancy

loise98 wrote: Louise, I think you are right about drawing the designs out before going to the machine. I read on a blog recently that the lady practised for 2 hours drawing the design over and over before she went to her longarm machine to quilt the design and she could then do that design without marking. I think this works very well for some people but not at all for others. I find that if I draw on the days when I cannot get to my machine and practise it is easier when I do get to FMQ than if I don't do anything in between sessions at the machine. I have been musing though whether the drawing works slightly better for the people who use a longarm machine than for people like me who use a domestic machine because of the fabric versus the needle that is being moved around? I have never had a chance to try a longarm machine and am not likely to either but I could try do set up a stationary pencil and move the paper underneath for practising couldn't I : Mind you people on the bus/train or in waiting rooms may give me some weird looks if I do come up with a contraption that would work on the go

Not that I've done anything that intricate but sometimes when I am sewing a design or even tracing a picture with thread and needle on the machine I just can't see where I am going. If I don't let myself get all bent out of shape by that fact, it seems radar takes over and I just know where to go and how to turn. I believe that has something to do with having learned the design by duplicating it a number of times during the design process. Marianne if you practice drawing it I believe you are also practicing for sewing it. It still blows my mind that when I sign my name FMQ my signiture looks the same as if I'd written it with a pen. It's my handwriting. I've done it that way with pencil and pen all my life now when do it FMQ it looks the same. A year ago I was doing alot of Zentangles and I believed that has helped with my FMQ. There's something about improvised drawing with permanent ink that helps build confidence over time. It is amazing to watch Sharon work.

I think I remember Sharon mentioning that the multiple times copying the design by hand help you to see the quilting path better when you get to that part. For my couple of wholecloths, I've designed the quilt in pencil full size, then have traced over the lines in Sharpie, then have traced the design on the fabric using a lightbox or the window. I agree that the different copies are good practice for the quilting itself.

Nancy

I don't know of any other method that will transfer detailed designs easier. It is just a labor of love
project to mark some of these quilts !

I would think that once you have the full design finished and enlarged, tha it would be more accurate to tape the design to either a sliding door or very big light table and then transfer to the freezer paper since the design is so intricate. I would think that the folding in Ricky's technique might throw the lines off a bit.