Sharing Orange Peel Grid Tutorial and Do You Have a Favorite Blogger ?

Greetings fellow quilters!  I hope you're having a fine week and finding time to stitch. 

In Upstate NY, USA we're having wild weather again.  Lots of rain last week -- then some days in the 70's -- and tonight they are calling for snow.

Before the snow reins down on us I decided to get a shot of a sweet daffodil in my overgrown front garden.  What a sight for eyes that have seen far too much snow this year.    

Long live the daffodils!

As always, there is a lot going on here at home - I'm getting caught up from my first overnight Lecture and Workshop with the First Dutchess Quilters in the Hudson Valley area of NY.   It was a great trip and fantastic experience with a bunch of talented, warm, and fun-loving quilters. I'll share more about that event in another post.

Today I wanted to share a new tutorial with you -- a quilting design I'm referring to as "Orange Peel Grid".   This design takes a crosshatched grid and turns it into a design full of texture and movement.  It's really simple to setup and to stitch and is a design you MUST add to your Design Motif list.

The design has been floating around the Free Motion Quilting world for a while now -- I was first inspired by a similar design shared by Diane Gaudynski in her AQS "Quilt Savvy" book. If you're into Free Motion Quilting, Diane's book is a must have.  She shares all sorts of FMQ tips and tricks and quilting designs -- I love thumbing through it (the quilting and images are out of this world!).

After seeing Diane's work, and some other beautiful variations on the internet, I decided to give this a try but with an added twist.  Instead of just marking the straight line grid, I used the walking foot on my Janome Horizon 7700 and stitched the grid.   The stitched grid provides you a blueprint to complete the rest of the design with FMQ Continuous Curve stitching.

On the sample above I 'marked' the grid on the fabric using a Clover Hera Marker to put a crease in the fabric.  It works out wonderfully and allows me to skip putting actual marks on the fabric.

For the grid marking details you can review this You Tube video "Orange Peel Grid Design - Part I - Preparing the Grid on Paper". 

After I creased the fabric, I used the walking foot on my Janome Horizon 7700, some Aurifil 50Wt thread and two layers of Quilter's Dream - Dream Wool to stitch the straight lines.   If you like, you could also use a free motion quilting foot and a straight line ruler to stitch the grid. 

Once the grid was stitched, (video above) I used a free motion quilting Ruler foot (you could use any FMQ foot, a darning foot, open toe darning foot, couching foot, etc) to quilt continuous curve lines around the grid.

This next video outlines (on paper) how to stitch the continuous curve design.  Click here => "Orange Peel Grid Design - Part II Continuous Curve on Paper" 

Lastly, there is one more video showing me actually stitching the Continuous Curve design using my domestic/home machine, Janome Horizon 7700.   You can view that video here:  "Orange Peel Grid Quilting Design - Continuous Curve on a Domestic Machine"

I would LOVE to know what you think about the videos and their tutorial value.  Thanks for any feedback you can provide, it helps me improve things over time.  To stay in-tune with future tutorials and demonstrations, subscribe to my YouTube channel at this link.

Lastly, before I go, I wanted to tell you about the National Quilters Circle Blogger Awards (currently open for nominations through April 29th).  The National Quilters Circle is an organization that provides technique and project tutorials and videos to the world of quilters.  You can read more about their mission here.

They currently are hosting a fun new online competition where YOU get to determine this year’s best quilting blogs in any one of these 7 nomination categories:

• Best Traditional Quilting Blog
• Best Modern Quilting Blog
• Best Quilting Patterns Blog
• Best Fiber Arts Blog
• Best Art Quilts Blog
• Most Humorous Blog
• Best Overall Quilting Blog

It looks like a fun competition and I'm sure it will open our eyes to some great new Quilting related blogs.  You can read more about the competition and nominate your favorite blog at this link..   Stay tuned to the NQS blog for the voting stage that begins in early May and ends May 15th!

Do you have a favorite blogger (or two ?).

Thanks for stopping by - I have a sleeve to stitch down before I call it a night.  Have a great remainder of the week!

Hugs,
Karen