It’s my final post of the week, I hope you enjoyed reading along and perfecting your flying geese block, and how the SewNotice app makes your machine embroidery experience stress free!
I finish the week, with my 5 tips for an awesome quilting finish using the PFAFF creative icon.
Quilting with the PFAFF creative icon
1. Choose correct size for backing and batting
The batting and backing should have 5″ extra all around your quilt top to ensure that, when quilting, the quilt top can move slightly without missing batting or backing in the process. It also eases the task of positioning your layers when making the sandwich. I’m using Fairfield Quilter’s 80/20 for this project. It comes in a convenient size of 45” x 60”.
Here are all my goodies that I used to make my project
2. Sandwich your pieces
I use ODIF 505 Temporary Fabric Adhesive Spray. Ensure that your backing is secured to a table, wrong side of the fabric facing up. Add the batting and fold it in the middle.
Use the adhesive spray on the backing and reposition the batting on top, repeat on the other side.
Position the quilt top in the middle of the batting while ensuring that there are no wrinkles.
Fold the quilt top in the middle and use the adhesive spray (I prefer to spray on the back of the quilt top rather than the batting) and reposition on batting.
Repeat for the other side of the quilt top.
Leave your piece laying flat, or roll if you must store it, and wait overnight to begin quilting.
I use ODIF 505 Temporary Fabric Adhesive Spray to sandwich my quilt
3. Give yourself plenty of room
I love quilting this piece on the creative icon. This time I pulled out the embroidery tray as I want to try something new. I had lots of space to maneuver the quilt and the lighting was great.
4. Quilt straight lines to stabilize project
In this project I quilted in the ditch between my large gray pieces and my flying geese row. I used the Sulky Blendables 30wt for this portion of the quilting in a neutral gray so that it wouldn’t stand out too much.
Then I quilted still in neutral gray on the left hand side some straight lines to mimic a big flying geese outline.
I quilted in neutral grey some straight lines so that it would reproduce giant flying geese outlines.
5. Creating your own quilting design with the PFAFF creative icon
Now the fun part begins.
I want to quilt flying geese outlines with various thread weights to give it some dimension. So I pulled out my Sulky threads: playing with the neutral gray and colored Sulky Blendables in 30wt and added the 12wt where I really wanted it to stand out.
Sulky threads come in a wide range of blendables colots and in 30wt and 12wt
Here is the truly fun part: the creative icon gives you 2 different options to quilt your designs.
Option 1: Using the Shape Creator
Presenting the Shape Creator on the creative icon
– First, select “Shape Creator” on the screen and select the triangle shape located in the upper drop down menu, adjust the size and rotate to match the flying geese on the quilt.
– Open the “Edit stitch” on the right-hand side on the screen and press on your choice of stitch and keep on pressing until the line of the shape is red. Doing so will add the straight stitch to your design till it’s filled.
– At last, press “Ok” to close the Shape Creator window and started the embroidery.
Option 2: Using the ImageStitch app
ImageStitch is a free app available for your smartphone or tablet that lets you take a picture and transfer it into stitches for you to embroider.
You can save the design on your mySewnet cloud and it will be synchronized to your mySewnet on your creative icon. So I designed my flying geese outline on my personal computer and printed it so that I can take a picture with the app and download in the creative icon.
Once I’m in my studio, I can go into the creative icon and find my embroidery design in mySewnet file to start the quilting.
Design option 1
Design Option 2
Whichever option you choose, you have to position your quilt in the embroidery hoop and adjust the triangle location according to the quilt. I love that the creative icon comes with the largest included hoop ever: 360mm x 260mm. And there’s an optional 360mm x 360mm.
I’m still in the testing stage in this project and have not quite finished it yet. But rest assured it won’t be a UFO too long as I plan to use my summer to perfect my quilting skills using the many features available on the PFAFF creative icon.
I will be back at the end of the summer to show you more great tips on how to use the great features and apps available on the creative icon.
This is part 5 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 4: Stop stressing over your machine embroidery with the SewNotice app
[shareaholic app=”follow_buttons” id=”23735596″]