FMQ-ing the Orange and Grey

In my previous post for July 27, I'd begun to plan the FMQ on my Orange and Grey quilt. I pretty much stuck with as much of the plan as I had settled on. I outline quilted the central portions of each block echoing the large scale patterns of trees, leaves and spheres. For those blocks with a striped frame, I paralleled the line direction outward.

I was undecided on how to do blocks framed with the birdie fabric. I chose parallel lines alternately spaced either ¼" or ¾" apart. Sounds simple enough but on four out of five of these blocks I managed to mess up the spacing on at least one side. Look at the top right band. The spacing is ¼", ½", ¼".

Here is the framing corrected to ¼", ¾", ¼". Since overall texture is the goal, the difference does stand out from a distance even if up close the measurements look similar. The ¾" is pretty much the birdie height and so complements the print. I am pretty sure those few residual perforation marks from the picked out stitches will steam out.

Why did I keep messing up? I finally figured it out – I think. The ruler has alternating solid and dashed lines. Since I was using white thread and my stitch length was about the size of the dashes, I kept mistaking a stitching line with a ruler guideline. Once I recognized this confusion and knew to watch for it, I did better. Also another help was that I gave myself permission to turn the quilt instead of trying to sew up-down and also left-right.  I could then stitch on a consistent side of the ruler, working my way from the inner seam edge of the frame to the outer perimeter. My poor brain could not handle sewing above or below or to the left or the right of the ruler, along with deciding the correct guideline to align.

For comparison, the incorrectly sewn frame is on the left, and the correctly spaced one is on the right.

Here is completed block done consistently and "correctly".  Having alternating channel widths lends textural interest. I reminds me of a flat fell seam on jeans  – without the seam and without the jeans.

It is hard to see the quilting lines in the next photo, even though I tried to take it at a steep light angle. My husband wonders why I fuss so much on what he says you cannot see. He has learned my lingo though. "Maybe it will puff up after it is washed," he concedes to please me. I learned that if I concentrated on going just outside the line I am following, by maybe an ⅛" or so, slight wobbles and glitches are not as visible and there is more room for the colored portion to pop out from the white background. And, yes, thank goodness my quilting is better than my drawing.

Next up I have to pick a quilting pattern for the orange mega-weave print and the charcoal dots. I have auditioned quite a few options but have yet to downselect. I think the quilting on those fabrics should have a closer stitch density since they are not very interesting just on their own. I want them to recede around the central rectangle. I did try out a feather on the dots and it really does not show up. Here are some other choices. A meander, show on the top and right side, just might do the trick, but the loops on the bottom side I think fall short of the effect I want.

It is relatively simple but I like these ribbon lines. I just wonder if it is too much like the other frames with stripes.

I do think this gentle wavy line with sporadic leaves is appealing. I suspect though, like the feather I tried, it just won't show up. Anything is visible with that bold red marker, but with a fine line of white thread...? That is another story.

I am leaning toward the meander amongst the dots, dense enough to cause the frame to recede. Aah, more decisions. That is indeed a difficult part of FMQ for me. I will now visit Let's Bee Social #136 and see if others have their two cents to add.