January Journal Piece - Take 2

Last night, I did another practice piece for my January Journal piece -- the tree on the left is the new piece. This time I used only the piece of muslin and a stabilizer on the back, thinking that might lessen the tension problems I had with the first piece and make for less puckering. As you can see, it didn't work - in fact, I think this piece is even more puckered than the first one. There are proportion problems with the new tree that I'm not happy with as well, but I'll keep that in mind for the next try. Now I guess I'm waiting until my new bobbin case arrives for the Bernina -- I went to get one last week, but they had them on order, none in stock, so it's paid for and as soon as it comes in, I'll try adjusting the bobbin tension to see if I can resolve some of the puckering problems that way. For this attempt, I used a different thread too -- this is a Valdani thread called Mountain Hike -- it's a beautiful thread, but I'm not as satisfied with it as the color for my bark as I was with last week's King Tut thread. The Valdani is also a thicker thread than the King Tut and I had to use a larger needle. For the lower part of the tree trunk and the roots, I just did free motion quilting like I would if I was quilting a quilt, and as you can see there is a lot of puckering. So for the upper part of the tree, I dug out the hoop that we used for threadplay in the Julie Hocker class I took, and as you can see, there is less puckering but still more than I want to see. Still have some other threads to try out and I learned something about watching my proportions more carefully, so it was a useful learning experience - I just hope I can get to the final stage of this project by the 20th!!