Friday, November 12, 2010

Finally sewing again!

After a summer and early fall spent fixing up Mom and dad's new house and then having surgery that turned into a major event with long recovery I am finally getting back into the swing of things and starting to get the sewing room back in order. First project to get things cleared out was to finally get Kathleen Burn's sampler quilt quilted. Her mom asked me to quilt it because Kathleen found that the spray baste made her hands break out when she tried to work on it. It as been sitting in my sewing room for over a year. I had to do a few repairs to faulty seams before I could begin quilting. I was free to do whatever I wanted and I felt the quilt needed each block quilted differently...a perfect opportunity to practice free motion quilting (FMQ) filler designs. I felt rather dense quilting was in order as some seams were still a bit weak and quilting will hold the quilt together. It turned into a major undertaking! each of the 20 blocks took 45-60 minutes to quilt. When those were done i pondered what to do about the sashings and cornerstones. Four inch wide sashings definitely needed a fair amount of quilting to keep balance in the quilt. I considered a few FMQ designs, but by that point I was wanting to just get it done, and I didn't want the quilting in the sashings to compete with the blocks. Denny suggested just simple straightline quilting crossing in the cornerstones. I decided 4 lines would be dense enough. It turned out to be just the right thing, and straightline with the walking foot goes so quickly. I am quite pleased with how it turned out and I hope Kathleen and Carol like it when I deliver it next Thursday....after showing it off at Guild Monday! Here are closeups of several of the blocks.


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did manage to make some lotto blocks for October and I won! Blocks have been arriving and I've started arranging them. 48 nine inch blocks should make a couple of quilts for community projects.


Here is one grouping...not all the blocks have arrived yet, but these seem to play together nicely. But before I will allow myself to work on quilts i need to get 4 skirts/dresses made for Ginger.