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...