Tuesday, September 3, 2013

The good, the bad, and the ugly

                                                                                                                                                                    

The good news is this quilt was awarded a ribbon at the Mercer County Fair in New Jersey.  The design was purchased from Hoop Sisters, a digital embroidery design company.                                                                                                    
   This is their whole earth design, which I made into a wall hanging of five inch blocks.  Other students in my class made this design using larger embroidery hoops; their designs were less dense, and resulted in quilts large and soft enough to cover beds.           
               
I brought this design to the Fair because I wanted to show others this interesting urban graphic style.  The designers were able to create a 3-D look even though they specified the wall hanging could be stitched with only one color thread.  The secret was to applique the sphere using a different color from the background of the rays in the inner border.  Even if the applique was not used (similar to a whole cloth style quilt), the wall hanging would have visual depth due to closely packing stitches at the edges of the circle.

The bad news is my sloppy binding on the reverse side of the wall hanging did not escape the judges' notice.

Which brings us to the ugly, Husqvarna's recently redesigned wide binding foot.  Although it is scary looking, it snaps onto the sewing machine ankle; similar to most of their other attachments, a screw driver is not required.  I loaded the pre-folded and pressed binding before pushing the foot onto the sewing machine's ankle.  The foot worked best when I used my right hand to support the binding fabric while sewing;  a Husvarna dealer recommends loading the fabric into the slot on the right side of the foot, but I had better results loading the foot as intended by the engineers.  I also found this works best for low loft batting.

 Here is a dealer demonstration of the foot 

With practice and this new binding foot, I am planning to be an expert binder.

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