Thread Tales From A Scrappy Quilter

I did not get to participate Friday as planned, however I did arrive while the 3rd mitered bordered was being pressed!    Here's a preview of the top before it goes to the quilter. It is GORGEOUS!    Well planned and coordinated,  what a great team.   Now on to the quilter and also back to the cutting boards to make some pillow cases, runners or table cloths. This will be a lovely set for some lucky winner @ the 2012 show.

We met last week to work on our guild's 2012 raffle quilt.  We worked on piecing the sashing and then joining sashing to blocks and made lots of progress!    Our host has such a fantastic home for the group to meet.  We all have ample space to spread out yet still be able to chat among all the stations.  Here's a few pics: Webstser coordinated  several steps of the quilt making including the sneak peak at the layout!

These 3 lap quilts are off the frame.   All three used the same backing which was very busy and super to work with because most thread colors blended in nicely.  I had recently picked up a bundle of paper pantographs from someone  that had gone digital/computerized so was curious to try out some of those new patterns.  The beauty of working with a pantograph is that you don't have to worry about spacing on your quilt top.   Everything is very symetrical and well balanced but the downside is that you are working from behind, looking at a piece of paper and not the stitching.  These 3 would have also been good quilts for me to work on my own freehand fill designs but I just had to try out these patterns.   All quilts made from members scrap baskets. Jacobean panto, I liked it on paper but stitched out I feel it would have been perfect with something in the center of those leaves. ...

I loaded another scrappy quilt on the frame yesterday.   Someone else made this one and I am quilting it.  This quilt will end up going to one of the local groups that our guild members support.  I forgot between stopping and starting later that I had been in "baste" mode with a long stitch length.  Started quilting and right away realized my error because it just sounds different.  Snipped my threads but the bobbin thread was snug from knotting  off my beginning.  Reached for my nippers, tossed the quilt bottom edge to the side and was getting ready to scramble underneath so I could clip those pesky threads when I heard that RIPPPPP sound.    I was horrified to discover my nippers must have caught on the fabric on the quilt top!  I was sick that I had made such a stupid mistake but ever so grateful that this was on a scrappy quilt and I could repair this. Do you see that tear in t...

This finished just the way I had hoped for.   Nice and crinkly yet the quilting design shows distinctly.  All fabrics were pre-wased and dried.   Hobbs 80/20 batting.  The fabric I used for the binding came from my mother's box of stuff from the 70's.   It is really, really thin and she had pieced sections together to make a large back for some quilt that was never done.  Maybe she realized the fabric was too thin too.... but fine for a binding that will never be a well used bed quilt. Kadie says she really likes this one too!

This top has been made for several years, the blocks go back to a swap with Greenie's Quilting Geese back in 2003 if I remember correctly.  The quilting task always seemed a little to daunting for me using the sit down, push and pull method on the sewing machine and too limiting on my smaller 5" quiltable space on my old Grace frame.   So it has sat for many years waiting for a solution. Here are a few pics while I worked on this project.   It's coming off the frame this AM and on to the binding job (which as you will see is another job in itself!). Gosh, this was taken back at the lake house... prior to our move to FL in 2006. First peak at the work in progress (WIP) Kricket and Kadie being good little fur babies sleeping as I quilted yesterday.   I decided I should find Angie and post what she was doing and here is where I found her: Angie was snoozing on the still open sleeper sofa in my sewing roo...

It is exciting to finally see this little lap quilt come full circle.  It is now quilted, bound, washed and dried.  You can see the beginnings of this project posted on my blog back in November 2009 .  The top was completed in Hawaii, I even cut the binding in Hawaii.    I just needed the quilting space, a backing fabric and a quilting plan.   I've had so many issues with my quilt frame mixed in with our frequent travel, holidays and company.  But happy to report that it did get finished within the 1 year mark of returning to the mainland (this week last year - woohoo!).  The 4 patches themselves measure 4" square and are cut from repeats in the same section of fabric so that you get a new design within each block.  I decided it would be fun to do something different in each block and quilted many of these designs from "Free-Motion Quilting Made Easy" 186 designs from 8 simple shapes by Eva A. Larkin.   I th...

In 2007, at the age of 10 years old, our big boy "Tigger Bigger Boo" was diagnosed with diabetes.   This was not the first crossroad with illness or injury we had faced with Tigger.  We had been through several scares with him.  Tigg had a very special personality and relationship with me.  I was going to do whatever I needed to see him through this.  We could write a book on our emotional journey and details of trying to manage feline diabetes with food regulation, 12 hour insulin injections, 12 hour glucose curves with ear pricks every 2 hours to get samples along with oodles of logs, schedules and journals.   But through it all, my boy presented me with the greatest gift of all, his love and the sweet gentleness that only he has possessed of all my kitty babies.  We lost our sweet, brave boy on Friday, May 13, 2011; the day before "dad" was to leave for an overseas mission.   He will be cherished in our hearts fore...

THIRD carriage arrived today.   #2 carriage was swaybacked and no matter what we did, you could not level the frame because the problem was in the CARRIAGE.   With the machine near the back of the frame, it would roll forward and stop in the middle sometimes swinging back and forth, yet if you rolled the machine to the front and took your hands off, it also rolled to the middle....   Quilted like you were plowing an unturned field.  Imagine my dismay when we set up the 3rd carriage today and she loudly "clicked" all across the tracks...   Good grief, this one had a bad bearing on one of the wheels.   Thankfully, hubby determined which one it was and replaced it from carriage #2.  Customer support said "but I checked it myself"...  but if you don't have the weight of the machine on it, you might not notice a problem and it certainly did not "click" when rolled.   After swapping out one of the wheels...

Binding prepared and sewn down to one side this afternoon.  Yeah!   Leaving in a few days so decided to take some pics today and post because when I get this finished and laundered, we will be leaving to visit family before Bob departs.   I did wash and machine dry a sample with the wool batting and it came out so nice so will keep our fingers crossed that the quilt will wash up this well too.   Hubby is thrilled with his quilt!