Two Finished Flower Quilts and a Moxie Report

I have two finished flower themed quilts to share with you today! Both were quilted on my Handi Quilter Moxie and I have again learned a huge amount. So in this post we’ll be exploring the quilting of my Journey to the Centre of a Flower quilt and my new version of the Bedding Plants quilt from my book.

I actually finished the quilting on the (let’s call it for short) ‘Flower Journey’ quilt over a month ago. The quilt itself started with the class sample I made while filming the workshop video for my Journey to the Centre of the Earth class for QuiltCon Together last year.  At the time I was also stitching my Zinnia embroidery and I suddenly thought that adding petals around the edge of the ‘Earth’ would make a similar style flower to the Zinnia.  So I took the background piece off and added a few more curves along with all those needle-turn petals. You can read more about the evolution between the embroidery and quilt top here.

This whole quilt top came together so easily for me. I made one quarter at a time working clockwise from the first one, top left.  I would piece all the centre bits on the machine during the day (using my freehand foundation piecing technique) and then hand stitch the needle-turn applique details in the evening.

I finished the top in early February but then had to put it aside to work on other things.  Before quilting I added a wide border of the same background fabric as I wanted a little more negative space around the flower and also some extra leeway for trimming after quilting.  The actual size of the finished quilt is 71″ square.

I absolutely love the look of close matchstick quilting and one of the main reasons for wanting a long arm machine was to be able to achieve this look. There is just no way I could get a satisfactory outcome on my domestic machine on a full size quilt.  Fot this quilt I also chose to use Aurifil cotton 40/3 thread in an off-white shade.  I had absolutely zero issues with thread breakage (which I had been told might be a problem using cotton thread in a long arm) but it does leave a lot more lint aound the bobbin case than the polyester.

I used the channel locker to quilt this. I had read and been given various advice about using either rulers or nothing at all (and embracing minor wiggles) but the channel locker seemed like the perfect solution and worked really well for me. It does involve a fair bit of walking around the machine but that just meant my step count was extra high those days!!

I didn’t measure between my lines, I just eyeballed it and I didn’t mind if some were closer together than others.  I randomly left spaces that could be filled later with hand quilting (something I have done for years with smaller projects like pouches). I used a size 9 stitch so it was a little bigger than the 10 I have been using for FMQ. I also turned the quilt on it’s side so the quilting lines would go vertically and maybe look a little like fine rain.

But I made a stupid mistake by starting my quilting from one edge and working my way to the other.  As I am relatively new to the Moxie this is the only way I have worked so far and I have not yet tried any basting on the machine prior to quilting, so I just didn’t think of an alternative. What I realise now is that I should have started from the middle of the quilt and worked to the bottom edge before flipping it over, attaching to 2 rails and working from the middle out again. The reason for this is that when I got to the middle of this quilt there was a certain amount of excess fabric, caused by all the improv curves, and the quilt has ended up very slightly baggy in the centre. 

Though not as bad as I thought it would be while in the middle of quilting, it’s hard for me to know exactly how it will look when hanging in a show, for instance, as so far I have only hung it where a door handle was poking out at the centre or where I was dangling it from an inserted support.  I really want to check it by hanging it against a properly flat surface but haven’t had a chance yet.

I think the matchstick quilting took about 8 hours, so not too bad. 

Again I had to put this aside for a few weeks before I could add the hand quilting lines. I used Aurifil 12wt cotton in matching shades, and finished off with a faced binding.  I did consider blocking the quilt prior to binding but it is quite a big (and now heavy!) quilt and as my previous blocking space is now taken up with the Moxie I didn’t do it. I basically just couldn’t face it! But apart from the slight centre issue it does lay flat and is square.

I love this quilt so much and am so pleased with it that I have entered it to the Fine Art Textile Award for Festival of Quilts this year. Being selected for this prestigious gallery is a long shot but I thought ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ so I went for it. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

I finished a couple more charity quilts on the Moxie before I got started on my next quilt which is this new version of the Bedding Plants quilt ahead of the Quilt Along that regular readers will have heard so much about!

I decided to quilt this with different flowers along each of the rows and leaves in the border.  The orginal quilt had been beautifully quilted on a long-arm by my friend Kelly Orr and she had included little seeds along the sashing row, a detail I always thought was pure genious. I wanted to emulate this while avoidling any straight lies so I chose to quilt seeds in a long joined up row beneath the flowers.

This was basically a greatest hits of previous flowers I’d used for other FMQ quilts I’d made in the past and I was feeling pretty confident about doing a good job.

But the Moxie was playing up a bit, it felt ‘sticky’ and would suddenly jolt me off course in the middle of a curve. I couldn’t work out what was wrong. Was it me holding on too tightly? Or too loosely? Had it always been this way but I was only noticing it now because I was more aware of the machine?  I had to unpick a few times when it really looked unslightly but mostly I just ended up changing direction slightly and the busy pattern disguised it.  I don’t think anyone else would see a problem with my quilting but I knew I hadn’t had such a great experience as on previous quilts.

The day after I finished the quilt Liz and Pete from Pinhole Quilting (who supplied the machine) came up to see me. They were in Scotland doing some new machine installations and as lockdown restrictions had lifted somewhat they could finally visit and we could meet IRL for the first time.  Of course I got them to check over the machine and explained this little problem. Pete immediately said ‘Your wheels and rails need cleaning’.

This was something I had never thought about before!  The whole machine is just a magic instrument to me and I can’t really see the individual parts but it does have these little wheels on rails.  Pete lifted the big poles off (very easy to do) and turned the machine upside down. The wheels were filthy! with all sorts stuck in there.  These bits of dirt and fluff (lint and thread from the machine) accounted for all the little jolts and general stickyiness that I was experiencing. Liz showed me how to clean them with some wet wadding and took this little action video of me doing it with her expaining more about the problem.

The machine now works like a dream again and I know to keep an eye on this in future and regularly clean these areas.  This is a very important tip to pass on to all you new Moxie longarmers that follow along!

Liz and Pete published their own blogpost about the visit which you can read here.

This image below from the back really shows the quilting well and you can see that despite those ‘dirty wheel’ issues the Moxie still did a fabulous job.

This quilt is going to be a 50th birthday present for my dear ‘Girl Friday’ Jane next month and I can’t believe I am ahead of myself so much that I have it finished in time!

Meanwhile I have my next quilt loaded and I’m getting ready to try basting first on the machine before re winding it on just 2 rails so that I can start quilting from the centre. I’ll be back in a few weeks to tell you how I got on!

If you think you might be interested in finding out more about the Moxie head to Pinhole Quilting’s website here.  While you are their why not sign up for their newsletter. You will see a box on the sign-up form asking for a Moxie Mentor Referral Code.  If you enter my code JA102 you will get a big pack of thread and accessories worth over £100 (as listed above) if you go ahead and order a Moxie!