On The Frame

The other night I finally loaded a quilt onto my frame. It feels like it has been ages, even though I did Sea Swept just before Christmas. Hmm, I just looked back in my blog and it was November. 

So anyway, it was time to try out my Christmas gift. If you remember, Tony purchased the Grace company's Pattern Perfect System for me. 

Do you remember this lovely that came in a bag of scraps from FB? 

I rearranged the squares as they were not quite right. It was fun last week trying to get an outdoor  photo. A seemingly still day, with not a breath of wind yet neither of the quilt tops I wanted to photograph would hang nicely for me. 

Tuesday night it went on to the frame.

I planned to utilise the larger of the wavy lines on the boards.

I had already had a good look at the book, It did not have much to say.

And I was not impressed with how things turned out when I did follow the meagre instructions/suggestions.

I was unable to find much in the way of instructional videos or how tos on the net, so in the end I just got stuck in and started.

Did I practice first using an off cut of batting and an old sheet??

NO! 

😉

Good thing things went ok then. LOL

By moving the stylus forward and backward on the machine carriage after each pass over the quilt top.

and moving the boards left or right on the frame base.

A simple wavy line can make quite pretty fluid and organic patterns.

I had thought I might just do a simple cross hatch on this quilt, it would probably have been done in less time than it took to load it on to the frame, but I'm glad I decided to pop it onto the frame and have a play.

Problem now is, partially through my first quilt using the system, I want more boards, with prettier and more complex patterns, lots of them need a longer machine.....

Negotiations have opened....

This may take a long time.

Or a lotto win.

That's my news, I'm off to finish quilting,...... I just realised, I didn't give this one a name yet.

How about Refreshed Florals?

Nope!

Fresh Florals?

That will do.

Now that is sorted,

I'm off to finish quilting Fresh Florals.

 

The one that was delayed in the mail.

Santa surprised me this year.

He was a bit put out that this gift was the one that got held up in the COVID/Christmas delays. But it is here now and WOW! Santa did good.

As you know I have a Grace frame for quilting. I have not done a huge amount with it, I've pretty much mastered the meander and had a go at some custom quilting. I would love to have a go at some ruler work, so Santa bought me rulers, but they are thin rulers, for domestic machines. That's ok, he did not realise. Then yesterday, very early in the morning we heard a delivery van pull up outside our door, and this was delivered. Oh boy!

The starter set, for the Grace Company's Pattern Perfect system. 

It has eight quite basic designs, a great place to start .

It took very little time to get it set up on my frame. The templates have four patterns on each side and are very easily adjusted or turned over.

The stylus is also adjustable and slots into the grooves, just like the templates we used to have at school for practicing letters and patterns.

There are other pattern templates, a little more like pantographs and Santa knows that I would love some of those too, but he rightly thought that the starter set would do for now.

Of course it all came in a very sturdy box that was inspected

and repurposed very quickly.

I think she likes it.

I have a few quilt tops awaiting quilting, I'd better go find one and get it loaded up so that I can play.