Friday, November 18, 2016

Free Motion Friday - Curly Cogs

Today I was thinking about that cog/gear toy that I played with as a kid.  I decided it would look fun with a curl inside it and Curly Cogs was born!  There are many similar designs out there I think (perhaps like flowers?  These do look like these too....), but this is the first time I have stitched something like this personally and that's what this project on my gorgeous Island Batiks is all about!

The written directions for this pattern are here.


Start by stitching in the ditch around the block.  Then make a curl about 1 inch in diameter.  Stitch in to the center as shown below.


Then stitch back out.


Now add a curly "cog" shaped line to go around the curl and then echo it back.


Now continue from where you are with a new curl.


Echo the curl back.


Add your cog line.


Echo your cog line back.  Now you can see that I'm stuck in a corner.  I chose to stitch in the ditch along the outside to get to where I wanted to start again.


Continue stitching in this fashion.  You will notice with the curl below that the area around it is NOT even in width.  The area just to the left of the needle is rather wide, while the area to the right of the needle is very shallow.  I plan to do big cogs where the big areas are and small cogs where the little areas are.  This does take some thinking while stitching.


Oops....there's some space in the corner.


Here's the finished design!  If you look in the upper right corner  you can see that it looks like a cog is coming in from the border.


I hope you get to quilt today! (And I hope Minnesota doesn't have too much snow in it's first storm....just enough to play in today!)
Suzy

1 comment:

  1. Oh so versatile!!!!! Great motif!!!! The warm/unseasonable Nov. weather is in the process of changing as I type this. Woke up to 56F and now......well, let's just say it's definitely NOT!!!! Extreme S.E. MN got pretty much bypassed with this first wave.....hmmmmmmm, wonder what tonight will bring????!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete