HQ Sweet Sixteen Sunday - Quilting Swirls with Helen Godden

I'm here with Helen Gordon and she saw she's going to show us a few things on this week 16 thanks Paula so Helen now we wanted to talk about a few your different designs okay and one of the first ones we were going to do was the the swirl but it's with sort of straight lines yeah I call it the abstract spiral so it's still based on the way that you make a spiral which is by making a number six yet but on our way in we're going to do little straight lines and give it a geometric look okay and the main thing for people to remember is to to get a point to get a sharp angle you have to take your hands just that little bit and then you'll get an absolute sharp which is sometimes you want that sometimes you don't but in this case we do so you're not actually stopping you just sort of has like yabbering you're hovering your hands the machine keeps going but your hands up just pausing that little split second I don't can I ask you while you start and what sort of speed do you like using your sweet 16 it I tend to stitch in about 65 okay cuz i'm you know quite confident with my hands and so that gives me a good stitch length okay most of people at home might say they starting at 45 or 50 yeah and then as you get more confident with your hands you crease this better than machete okay so he was your guy these still leaving a little bit of space in between each line at the start now I can see my attentions not great there yeah I've got white coming up okay but so I'm gonna release my tension a little bit okay I hope they will stop that from happening yeah you can see I still made my number six right and then I've worked my way back out again because you do have to leave that gap when you're practicing in your mind you'll have to tell yourself leave a gap leave a space letter path whatever the mantra is that you get that works for you you will then be able to leave that track to come back out again okay one of the things that I had trouble with when I first started doing swirls people would say do a six but I would find it really hard to feel where that the tale of the six was so do you have quite a small tail on your six when he says it's only a small tail here your main secret what happens is people now from this point uh-huh might stitch straight across here okay another six and that's not you don't want that gap okay when you've come out of your six keep tracking around the outside of it looking ahead for a space for the next cell okay I'll keep traveling around the outside yeah keeping that band is using the distance the same yeah yeah and then looking ahead for a space there's a space earful and approximately see my seat yep working into the middle coming back out yeah keep traveling outside okay so you're not left with any big holes like it would be when I had a lot oh that's right you want to look filled yeah and by the same token I might finish this area here let's say I'm I'm feel like I'm gonna be stitching down this direction but I'm really worried about making sure I feel that bit there okay I might travel all the way around those to get there and if I keep that width about the same and just echo around yeah it look like part of the plan exactly it'll look like it yeah so you're not actually gonna go back and fill in that section you're using that as an echo to get to and again to it and now I've got a space to do my steps mm-hmm sometimes that six is a backwards sideways ups again is it still a six yeah so you're using echoes as much as swirls to fill in that piece and I think of the most travel yeah I use the word when I'm teaching travel because a lot of people will say oh I get stuck in a corner I never understand actually how you can be stuck in a corner no matter what I can travel mm-hmm and do something that looks like part of the DIA fairyland yeah to get to where I want to go and if I really are stuck in the corner of your quilt well you can travel down the edge of the quilt and disappear it doesn't matter yeah okay so I'm still gonna travel around this one to get my next area so really you are just hovering at those points yes my hands are hesitating yep just hovering that little split second it's not long but in that split-second the needle does three or four or five stitches and then you will get quite a sharp change of direction if I go back to normal spirals I'll show you the difference yeah normal spiral of course you'll want your hands moving smoothly to keep as curvy as possible yeah so there's no no hesitation to getting that flow going the whole time and are you using the foot of your sweet 16 as a guide to what scientists do but no I'm actually not I will if you mention it I - yeah but I'm actually just eyeballing at the whole time I'm okay judging and what people have to learn too is that when they first try free motion they are concentrating so much on their hand movements and after a while you're actually just looking at the pattern and wanting to just make that pretty pattern and not thinking oh not overly thinking the hand movements so where are you looking are you looking ahead are you looking ahead because your needle even if I'm not looking at it it will stitch okay I'm actually looking at and I'm thinking ahead as I come around so here I'm looking ahead for a space okay my finest Edina spur I launch into it it is where some people might find using a marker of some kind useful if they're looking at this big blank area it's a bit daunting yeah they might put a few circles on there as a reminder of where to go and that can just give them a bit of confidence okay for aiming the next spiral so how do you change directions now that you're in that corner how do you change to get out still doing that that occurred spur off see I can't fit one in here that's not a mistake people or makers think I must do a spiral yeah and they'll squeezy something in there that looks pretty ugly yeah so just echo back around okay so with a sharp point the same as what you had in the middle that's right so now you've got the two sharp okay same again maybe I've gone oops I forgot to spin off I might come back again looking ahead now I've seen my space okay so those by you keeping it the same as the sharp point in the center in the shop one in the outside of creating that consistency that's right we're devoted to the square now I'm I'm keeping you know that even gap the whole time I'm actually not touching any of my previous stitching but what if I'm going back in now and actually touched back on to that line that's kind of the way that I've been finding I do spirals better I like doing that straight line honey yeah there's no right or wrong it just gives a different look it's kind of like a handwriting isn't it you get your own absolutely yeah what I do like though with this when I'm teaching from my painting classes here the fact that's a continuous line we can now come back in and paint into that track and when it is continuous yeah you can't go wrong you'll be able to paint that and I'll be there's positive and negative kind of business that one apprentice does look what it shows off the stitching mm-hmm and you can either be painting into that or if this was on a much larger scale you could be stippling and adding more stitching so you could put little pebbles or something inside yeah yeah yeah fantastic so a lot of fun and what I like with the painting too is that here I'm working with a fine thread when I paint into it you're now looking at a quarter inch wide yeah of impact of design so I'm getting getting my designer show off more quite frankly yeah by getting it more impact fantastic so that's really beautiful thank you so much hello time you're welcome thank you you

Channel: Paula Storm

Views: 22,206

Rating: 4.8596492 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, Quilting, Sweet, Sweet Sixteen, HQ Sweet Sixteen, Helen Godden, paula storm, HQ Sweet Sixteen Sunday, Sweet Sixteen Sunday

Id: KQtMhTKgEcc

Length: 8min 3sec (483 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 05 2014