WIP Weds: Free Motion NOT Quilting

Quite some time ago now, the start of 2012 if the date on Sarah's blog post is anything to go by, I was able to see her morse code quilt being made for an exhibition at Bletchley Park (go on, check out the link!). After enjoying the quilting on my robot quilt so much I decided that I wanted to make something that was a 'quilting project' rather than a 'patchwork and quilting project'. I've seen quite a number of quilts at shows over the last couple of years that have been made purely from quilting but I have to admit that I cannot draw! So I've decided to make something similar to Sarah's morse code quilt.

Her quilt combined morse code with camouflage but I've kept mine a bit simpler by not copying the camouflage. I'm using binary rather than morse code and will be free motion quilting around the 1's and 0's using black thread on black fabric.

So last week I made these to draw round:

I had a bit of a stupid moment when I planned out the spacing. I had a limited amount of fabric and worked out that I could have a 3/4" space around each character...except that I had only measured the width and not noticed that they are taller than they are wide (duh!).

This only left 1/4" between the characters height-wise. I redrew the templates above taking 1/4" out of the height (this was pretty simple to do and didn't affect the shape too much) and after experimenting decided to use the shorter templates.

The 1/4" spacing wasn't quite enough!

I finished marking the quilt top in Saturday's class and got it basted too. I was really hoping to be able to show an in progress photo of the free motion quilting but alas, this happened:

Yes, one poorly child. Out of the window go sewing and studying plans for this week. Fingers crossed the older one doesn't get it too!