Straight stitch is by far the most popular stitch when doing free motion quilting, but a narrow zig-zag stitch is also a great stitch, particularly when a strongly defined stitch line is needed.

Some art quilts were just not meant to be! And it’s usually the ones you’ve spent hours and hours on, and used up all your most beautiful coveted fabric (sigh!!!).

Our vision can sometimes be lacking. Even though we can see a design clearly in our head and transfer it successfully to paper, doesn’t necessarily mean that it will turn out the way we planned.

Picture this: a trapunto peacock, with long flowing tail feathers outlined in thread and maybe bobbin work for effect, surrounded by a beautiful free motion quilted background in delicious threads.

The concept is simple, easy to visualize and put on paper. Then hours spent:

• deciding which fabrics to use – there’s only three fabrics mind you, but they must work together of course
• deciding what thread to use
• transferring the design from paper to fabric
• sewing the trapunto design
• decorative stitching
• decorative quilting
• deciding on borders

The peacock looks good!

The background free motion quilting is beautiful (even if I do say so myself).

And so is the border quilting.

The tailfeathers look good also.

But wait! Something doesn’t look right. How did I miss that? Oh my goodness, how the heck can I fix that! A little paint on the tailfeathers perhaps. Maybe a little more paint and some more stitching.

Oh rats, I give up !! That is one legless bird!!

At the moment, he sits abandoned in a crumpled heap in the corner (he has no legs to stand on remember), and I am ready to slice out the good bits to use on another more worthy project.

I like the design so I’m going to do him again, but I have no more beautiful watercolored yellow cotton lame (boo hoo!) However I did find some white cotton lame online which I’m going to dye when my dye room is done (a couple more weeks, woo hoo!!)