Back to Gravity

I have finished quilting my Kira quilt.  It's really beautiful, but then I admit to being biased!

So now what?  I have many UFO's, and  decided to work on one of those.  I chose Gravity, because it is the closest to being finished!  I dug it out of the stack, and put it up on my design wall.  This is how far I was when I was actively working on this quilt--the top half, and the colored sections of the bottom:

  

I had all the gray parts cut and labeled, and needed to sew them to the rest.  I have been working on making the rows, and now I have the 3 bottom sections finished.  Two more seams and the bottom will be done!

Because this is such a BIG quilt, I'm going to try something new (for me.)  I'm going to sandwich the quilt in 2 sections (the top and the bottom) and quilt each section separately, and then attach the two halves together.  I saw a tutorial on how to do this.  It means hand sewing the batting and the seam on the backing.  I am not overly fond of hand sewing!  The batting can just be basted together with a herringbone or zigzag stitch, but the backing will be tedious to sew.  I hand stitched the back of the Bottled Rainbow quilt, and it took a long time. But I still think that will be easier than trying to stuff this monster through the throat of the sewing machine.  It will be interesting.  I will need to choose a somewhat busy fabric to camouflage the hand stitches.  I have been thinking of what to use for the backing fabric too.  Maybe a black with a white design, or maybe polka dots.  When I go to the quilt expo in Sept, I will look for a backing fabric.      

Product Review

When I quilt, I like to do free motion.  Several years ago, husband bought me a special free motion quilting foot for my sewing machine, and a special set of rulers to use with it.

The quilting foot, shown on the yellow post-it note above is extra thick, and made to work with all the rulers.  The foot is adjustable, and it's tall sides keep the ruler from slipping under the foot. I have tinkered with these rulers and this foot.  Just tinkered.  I have a very hard time getting a good tension in my threads with this.  I think it would take a lot of practice to get nice smooth results from templates, and I find myself using my regular quilting foot more and more instead.

The open toe allows me to see exactly where the needle is.  Yes, there is a higher risk of getting your fingers run over, which I learned the hard way.  You HAVE to be careful.  The thinner depth of the open toe does let the ruler slip under the foot too-- a thicker ruler would be great here, but I don't have a quarter inch thick acrylic ruler.  I found something that works well though!  A lid!  It's tall enough that the screw that hold the quilting foot to the shank of the sewing machine glides nicely along the edge of the lid, and I get nice straight lines.  It gives you a nice flat surface to press down on, and keeps fingers out of the way too.  The width of the lid helps hold the quilt sandwich nice and flat and tight.  Take a look!

 

Quilters are good at problem solving and being innovative!  Who was it that said, "Necessity is the mother of invention?"  (It was Plato!)  

Back to Business, 2018 in Review

It's been over a year now since I've posted.  This hiatus was the result of my beloved husband, Bob, passing away, and some heath issues I had which have since been resolved with surgery, physical therapy, and time.  (A special thumbs up to my daughter for taking care of me in my time of need. ) The physical recovery went extremely well; the emotional recovery is still a work in progress...

However, I have not been idle in the sewing department of my life, just a little slower and a bit erratic.  Quilting has a sort of therapeutic aspect to it, even if it's sporatic.

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I made these 2 banners for a friend's birthday.  She requested a St. Patty Day banner, and I threw in the Welcome banner as a surprise.  The Welcome banner used that fusible grid for the 1-inch squares.  So easy.  I love that fusible grid!

  

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My daughter and I have a wonderful arrangement:  She pins my quilt tops into the quilt sandwich, and I quilt her quilts in exchange.  Here are 2 of her quilts that I quilted for her:

 

  

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Kira was a quilt I had been working on before the hiatus, and I have since finished the top, and it is currently under my needle in the (almost finished) quilting stage.  This turned out to be a really pretty quilt, using mostly batiks for the blocks, and Jinney Beyer border print for the border.

 

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My daughter and I decided we would make a jean circle quilt together, each of us making one half of the circles, then sewing them together when we got together. She lives near Denver, and I live in Wisconsin, so we don't get together as often as we wish we could. We currently have all the circles sewn into rows, and are in the process of sewing our rows together.  Here it is so far:

  

  

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I have a lot of blue fabrics,  and I mean, A LOT!  I made Kira with scraps.  Still I had a ton of blue scraps, so I decided on a scrappy blue string quilt.  I sewed strips to phone book pages, trimmed to 8 inches, and Voila!  The emergent quilt was so stunning, it needed a name other than "Blue Scrap Quilt!"  It reminded me of the facets on a sapphire, and so it will henceforth be called the Sapphire quilt!  Here it is:

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In January I saw a Mystery quilt challenge called Ice Crystals, by National Quilters Circle. https://www.nationalquilterscircle.com/article/mystery-challenge-week-1/

I had a fair amount of winter fabrics, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to use it.  However, I wasn't crazy about the blocks that this project presented to the group, so I decided to make my own blocks!  I started searching out snowflake-looking paper pieced patterns, and bought a number of patterns on Etsy, and eventually had enough to create this quilt below.  I love this quilt, and the challenge of some of these blocks was very exciting and satisfying.  The limiting factor for this quilt was the border fabric.  I had EXACTLY enough to do this--I even had to use 2 pieces to each side of the border, but only if I didn't match the pattern which is something I would otherwise always do.  It's not that noticeable, and when I quilt it I can camouflage the seams, but I would have liked to add 3 more blocks to the quilt to make it rectangular instead of square.  Oh well!

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My neice got married this summer, and I made her a pair of potholders to match a set of kitchen towels that held a gift card.  I also made "beer" potholders for her husband, the Grill Master.

 

Wow!  I was busier than I thought!  I THINK this brings me up to date, and I will try to be more diligent about posting here.