One Down, Nine to Go!

Happy Autumn and Happy National Sewing Month!

 

  
Believe it or not, a quite a bit of sewing has been going on, but I haven't had anything  to share.  After years of fits and starts, I finally bit the bullet and dived into free-motion quilting on a REAL quilt!   I have FMQed some borders, but that doesn't present the size and weight of an entire quilt.  I had 10 (ten!) quilt tops finished, some even sandwiched and basted. Do I want to pay to have all of these quilted?  NO!!

I picked a clamshell motif for which I have a template and that I thought would be relatively easy.  I practiced, practiced, practiced on a 24" quilt sandwich and got...um...less bad.  Then I marked a baby quilt.  It's for Quilts for Kids, one of those "get the fabric out of here" projects, so I figured perfection wasn't required.  Unfortunately, the quilt is flannel on both sides, and it was so heavy, I felt I was dragging it through the mud!  Back on the quilt rack it went, and I was ready to give up.

But for once I was determined.  I pulled a quilt top that was completed 7 years ago.  It's a one-block wonder, and while I loved the process, I didn't really like the fabric and it got lost in the shuffle.  You can see previous posts here and here.  It has lots of good points for this project:

• The batting is quite thin (not what I'd buy today) and the quilt is a manageable size (about 50" x 56"), especially with my new Janome.  
• The top is so busy, no one will ever see the quilting.
• The quilting is red on the top, green on the back, so if anyone does turn it over, I can pretend that the places where the red popped through are on purpose and it's a Christmas quilt!  😉

There was one drawback.  With 6 triangles coming together in the center of each block, the machine foot sometimes had trouble negotiating the bump.

Instead of the clamshell, I free-handed (no template) a motif that is similar to one that I have used several times before, but just not FMQ.  It's just a flower, of no particular sort, centered in each block. 

If you look real hard, you can make out the flower.  But as I'd hoped, you can't really see how goofy some of the stitching is.  All according to plan...

I used an oakleaf-like motif in the border.  The quilting thread is actually a fairly dark gold, but it sure doesn't look like that on the fabric.  I do like using nature themes -- no two flowers or leaves are exactly the same in nature, likewise in my quilting!

So, one down nine to go!  Several almost demand straight-line quilting, but I'll definitely continue working on my free-motion skills.  One in the line-up is a king-size quilt.  I'm still thinking will go to the long-armer just because of the size.  We'll see...

Is a Puzzlement...

Last February or early March, I embarked on a jigsaw puzzle (who didn't?).  It's a picture of eight of Bonnie Hunter's quilts, none of which I have ever made.  I barely had the pieces sorted (thank heaven for my portable puzzle table with drawers!) when we took off for Florida.  Dear reader, you know what happened then. When we returned home in May, there it was, staring back at me.💀 It took a while, but I finally got back to it.

This thing is 1000 pieces, 20" x 28", and hard as the devil.  Even sorting by color is hard, because Bonnie uses scraps from multiple projects in other projects.  So the blue that you think goes in one quilt will most likely show up in another one.  And just to make it more fun, a large part of a couple of the quilts were covered by the label, so I had no idea what those areas looked like.  I mean, I knew what the block pattern was, but didn't know what colors went where.

It took weeks to finish.  I finally ended up sorting the pieces within each quilt by shape.  But what a sense of satisfaction when it was done!!!  I left it together for a while, then started taking it apart, but the pieces were pretty well attached.  So most of it is still together.  I'm thinking of giving it to Kelli at the quilt shop to frame.  Only trouble is, I'd have to put the rest of the puzzle back together.  Argghhh.