Help!!!!! WIP Wednesday

Another completely different week this week, and quite a bit of progress.  Firstly my math is not very good and last week I completely forgot about McFlurry when doing my stats. So I'm going to have to adjust the figures. Who am I kidding, I'm just going to ignore it and try and remember to put it in this week.

I have a question to ask. I bit the bullet this week and went back to working on Tiggly Winks.  I was NOT looking forward to doing the raw edge applique on my Pfaff, and my reservations were well founded.  I have two different feet for FMQ and both of them are, frankly, crap.  The one that would be the best because I can see where I'm going just played up from the second I started. The other foot is the original foot and is thick plastic that makes it very difficult to see what you are doing. Consequently I have to turn the fabric all the time so that I can see where I'm going. Something that you are not supposed to do when FMQing. It doesn't matter whether I'm doing raw edge applique or free motion quilting it still has the same problems.

Does anybody have any experience with FMQing on a Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.0?

If so, do you have any tips to make FMQ easier?

I hope you can help, I really like the Pfaff for everything else, I don't have any other problems with it, but it is rather ironic that a specifically designed quilting machine is crap at FMQ straight out of the box.  I've been looking at Leah Day's blog and think I might try a couple of things that she does when quilting.
Firstly change the needle plate.  Second, try and cut the original foot so it is U shaped instead of square so I can see where I'm going. I'm also going to try a super slider and leave the feed dogs up and not change the settings to FMQ. Has anybody tried any of these ideas, if so, were they any better?

Now on to my progress for the week.

I finally pulled Tiggly Winks out of the bag it was hiding in, and put it up on the design wall.
The raw edge applique is finished. I forgot to do the binding strips for the stems so I  have to embroider these instead. I was going to start on the embroidery last night, but I decided to trapunto the applique. Is that a sentence in English?  - Trapunto the applique. -  Anyway, it took me ages to cut away all the batting. I was constantly freaking out that I was going to cut the background fabric by mistake. Amazingly I finished it without cutting the fabric at all, miracles do happen!!!!
I also started the sashing and finished the first column on the left.
I'm not feeling the love for this. I wanted to use up a couple of charm packs I had, Martinique and Oasis. I'm going to finish it and if my parents don't like it (I was thinking of giving it to them as I previously made two quilts in Martinique for them) I'll give it away. I probably should just stuff it in a box and forget about it, I might still do that!


Another couple of starflowers have been paper pieced and I've started joining them together. Unlike Tiggly Winks, I love this, it's a pleasure to sew in the evenings and I love how each fabric looks so different cut up and pieced back together. The starflowers  are just over 9 inches across.

I broke down and started a new quilt this week, you can see the design and the process here. In a nutshell, I won a Baby Go Cutter and used it to cut the HST's, a dream!!

Fabrics pulled for this project, more have been added.

I wanted a really scrappy look and didn't want the stars to stand out too much while using a limited palette, so I'm not worrying about the value of the HST's, I'm more concerned with the overall effect of the colours and prints. The only constants are the four light HST's in the centre of the star and the off white points of each star. I started with Hometown by Sweetwater and went through my stash to find some co-ordinating prints, most of which I have no idea of what they are as I don't have the selvage and  some I've had for ages or they came in scrap packs. The blocks are 16 inches, for some strange reason I kept on thinking they were 12 inches. Math is obviously not my strong point at the moment.

Three blocks so far.

In the mail this week, another BOM. I'm crazy but, what the heck, I love love love this and I just couldn't say no to joining in. You can never have enough circles to piece, lol.  I told you I was crazy.

Beautiful, gorgeous, luscious fabric to use for the first block. Love the colours. I haven't started this yet so I'm not adding it to my stats, yet, I'm just drooling over the fabric instead.

The statistics this week:

Worked On This Week
English Paper Piecing -  two more starflowers and sewed some together
Tiggly Winks - finished the applique and started the sashing
New HST Project - (It doesn't have a name yet) cut the HST's and pieced three blocks

Sitting On The Sidelines
McFlurry backing needs to be made
Floral Bouquet need to finish top
Plume Quilt - at the long arm quilters
Circle Game BOM hmmmmm
Mystery Quilt - trying to decide which star to use on the next 7 blocks - I AM NOT GOING TO PAPER PIECE THEM!!!!

Waiting Patiently For Me To Show Some Interest
Jacobean Flower - quilting
Don't Look Now cushion - quilting

Weeks Statistics
New Projects - 1
Completed - 0
Worked On - 3
Put To The Side This Week - 5
Hyperventilating Over - 1 (Circle Game BOM)
Ignoring - 2

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for another WIP Wednesday.