Project 25: Stippling

Now that the quilt is well on its way to being done I thought I might show you some of my early stippling attempts. I really had no clue what I was doing, but, armed with my sewing machine manual and a practice quilt, I set off to learn this technique.

My first attempt is above. I knew enough to lower the feed dogs and that I should be able to move the material around freely, but I really didn’t know how to get there. With my presser foot down it was impossible to move the fabric. When my presser foot was up I ended up with the sort of tangled mess you see here.

Attempt #2. I think I had increased my tension and tried to move the fabric faster, but the foot was still up and it was still a tangled mess.

It was at this point that I learned how to change the tension on my presser foot. I made it as loose as I could so that I could keep the foot down and still move the fabric. That resulted in this beauty:

Huzzah! Then I got bold:

Resolving to stick to abstract designs, I held my breath and moved my beautiful quilt under the needle. By attacking it block by block I managed to stipple over half of the quilt that first night. I just have 6 more blocks and the borders to go before it is time to figure out how to attach the binding.