Practice, Practice, Practice

I love designing, making fabric choices and piecing quilt tops. I even enjoy binding quilts. But the one area that I still find intimidating is the actual quilting of the quilt.

Last summer at the Vermont Quilt Festival I bought two pre-printed mini whole-cloth quilt tops - design specifically to practice quilting. This is the first one. It is only 16x16 inches. I free-motion quilted the middle and used my regular machine foot for the lattice. I used a variety of brightly colored threads so they would show up against the black background. For a first attempt I am pretty pleased with the results.

You can get the pre-printed tops at: http://quiltingstencils.com/.

National Quilting Day

Here is the second card for my Stashbuster's Fabric Postcard swap. We have not yet reached this stage of spring here yet - the grass is still flat and brown, even the weeds really haven't popped up yet. The only insects so far are the ladybugs in the house. I put both postcards in the mail on the 20th. The other postcard is pictured in my last blog post.

As this is officially National Quilting Day I have spent some time in the quilting room. I made another of my New York Beauty blocks. They are quite addictive and I now have 21 blocks. I laid them out to play with the design. I figure once I have 40 or more blocks I with think of starting to put them together. Here is what I have so far.

Spring Quilting Retreat

Attended the spring Wadhams Hall quilting retreat this past weekend. A fabulous time! I took a lot of projects to work on but only finished one - one of my Spring fabric postcard swap cards. (pictured here). I need to make one other postcard for the swap and get both in the mail by the 28th.

I took the fabric for my sister's place mats and did manage to piece the tops for all 6 of them - but I am not posting pictures - no sneak peeks Tammy, you get to see them when they are all done and sent to you. Not sure when that will be yet.

I also worked on my Brown Bag challenge quilt and did manage to finish piecing the top. It is a bit bigger than I initially envisioned it (roughly 60 x 60 inches). This project is an original design of my own - and the first creative quilt project that came out pretty much exactly as I envisioned it so I am thrilled with it. The flowers are paper pieced and the leaves are 'caveman' style curved piecing. The background is crazy pieced and the flowers were appliqued on with a machine blanket stitch.

Almost Spring - Sort -of, Kind-of

Well we had a wonderfully warm weekend - almost 50 degrees. I even took a walk each day without a winter coat and hat and scarf. But winter hasn't given up on us yet - we got about 2 inches of snow on Monday.

Since this fall I have been working on the guilds' Brown Bag challenge (pictured here in its not quite finished state). I came up with the idea of paper-pieced 'flowers' even before I got the fabrics. I have to finish one last flower and then figure out how I want to piece the background which will be in a variety of greens. It fits nicely with the general hope for spring.

One Stitch at a Time

I didn't figure I would get any quilting projects done this weekend, but I got into a groove and finished this 'One-Block Wonder' quilt that I started last year. It was pieced and the center and outside border had been sent out for machine quilting, but I wanted to do some decorative quilting in the orange border. So I did some free-hand machine quilting and put on the binding.



I am still working on my Brown Bag Challenge quilt which is due in April and my guild WIP (Work in Progress) quilt due in June. I also signed up for the Spring Stashbusters quilted postcard swap. I am trying to keep the number of projects with deadlines to a manageable size and timeline. The last thing I want from a hobby is more stress.

I am looking forward to our regular Spring quilting retreat in March. And I hope I will have made some real progress by then on these projects.

Enjoying the Little Things

I am in the middle of working steadily on a few larger quilt projects, but all of them will take a while to get finished. The urge to get something DONE took over and voila! Last weekend I went with the girls up to the Dreamcrafter quilt shop's annual sale and found this cute little (tiny really) pattern for a small fabric wallet.

I used fabric from my scrap box and it took no time at all to make. Although I had to read and re-read the last step in the directions a few times before I sewed it all together.

Keeping Busy w/out a Sewing Machine

My primary sewing machine is out for over a week to get its regular service cleaning and oiling. Last weekend I spent organizing and re-folding the fabric stash.

I also have been keeping up on doing some occasional hand piecing since I took a class with Froncie Quinn of Hoopla Patterns in the fall. All the star blocks pictured are hand pieced. I have plastic templates to trace the shapes and it makes it very easy to fussy-cut particular elements into the pieces you use.

I have also given hand quilting a try. I had a very brief intro to hand quilting at a guild 'try a new technique' day. Wasn't very happy with the results that day. I tried again this week and used thicker thread and loosened up the hoop. It certainly isn't tiny invisible stitches, but I like this chunky folk style that I ended up with. I have yet to hand quilt an actual project, I guess that will come next.