Machine quilting sampler II
I learnt to machine quilt in 2000 and decided to make a couple of samplers after making heaps of practice sandwiches. This is the second one made in 2002.
I was inspired by the death star and divided a circle into sections. It was going to be a circular quilt so I didn’t do any stabilising walking foot work around the edges. As I was having so much fun after completing the circle, I decided to quilt the excess around it. Without the stabilising work, the quilt developed major waves in it. I never quilt from the centre out as I don’t want to risk the waves but with this quilt it didn’t matter.
I was taught if you do all the walking foot work first on the quilt, you can start the machine quilting anywhere. This allows you to start somewhere away from the focal point until you get back into the zone and leave your best quilting for the focal point. The very centre was quilted last.
The filler design around the outside was a marked design. As I didn’t mark it on the quilt before hand, it was hard to mark after the centre had been quilted. The twisted ribbon border didn’t work out well in the corners as each one was different. This was a major bugbear to me and prompted me to solve corner issues for asymmetrical designs when I was writing The design master plan.
I tied off the threads at every stop/start. It looked like a shag pile rug at many points along the way. Please excuse the greenness of the photos, for some reason, a green tinge is being added to the photos today. It was quilted on cream calico.
Designs here were inspired by Quilter’s Newsletter, sand dunes, finger print, cut onions, a folded piece of paper, Star Trek, a drain cover, spirals, straight stipple, noughts and crosses, the letter E, circles, knots, snowflakes, the movie The Dark Crystal, wrought iron work, spiralled ribbon, wheat, a Celtic knot and a zipper. I didn’t know how to do Paisley so they turned out to be moons.
Designs on this section were inspired by a cityscape, handkerchiefs in pockets, Southwest, germs, pebbles, Greek key and a log. The design used as a filler around the outer circle was an ancient Egyptian design I found on a biscuit wrapper.
Fiona Schiffl 
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