Sunday stuff

When I got home from church today, I loaded some backing material, batting, and a few leftover pieces of t-shirt material on the long-arm so that I could see how it was to quilt a knit fabric, and to check the tension.

It was fun to play.  I was satisfied that it went well, and now I am looking forward to quilting both t-shirt quilts.  I did spend time adding sashing to the “A” quilt and hope that I can finish that task up tomorrow.

I also finished knitting a simple scarf.  I saw this yarn at JoAnn’s and thought it looked interesting.  It is small amounts of different yarns tied together and sold as “Magical”.  Hmmmmm – someone got a bonus for thinking up that trick.

The scarf  will go well with my winter jacket,  and it feels nice and warm on my neck.

 

 

Tired

One thing I do not like about getting older is that I run out of steam much too fast.

I woke up early this morning, determined to make significant progress on the t-shirt quilts that I am making.  I finished piecing the “B” quilt, and prepared the binding and backing.

 

Then it was on to the “A” quilt……. I figured out the layout and did the sashing calculations on an Excel spreadsheet, and then started cutting and sewing sashing on.  However, my enthusiasm fizzled out and I had no more steam to keep chugging along.

The Queen needs to go sit in her quiet living room and read for a while.

 

Get ‘er done……

The binding on the antique quilt is done.

Made the Craftsy block of the month for September….

And the Fat Quarter Shop’s 4th block of the Designer Mystery block of the month.

On the T-shirt quilt front, my grand nephew sent me first-choice and second-choice t-shirts.  Since I have never made a t-shirt quilt I decided to use the second-choice quilts to make a second quilt. Here it is without borders.

And  here is the trial layout for the first-choice t-shirts.

There are still filler pieces to be added, sashing, and borders.

Slowly but surely I am getting ‘er done!

 

Quilt Show goodies

My sales resistance fell apart when I saw the hand-dyed fabrics at one vendor’s booth, and the batiks at another vendor’s booth.  The wonderful array of thread in this picture is for my long-arm and was given to me by my generous and loving friend, Lindsay.  (I’ll have to say that this small pile of fabric is probably the least I have ever brought home from a quilt show.)

 

Although there were many, many quilts worthy of taking pictures, I am not always enthusiastic about getting the camera out.  I like to look and absorb what I am seeing instead of worrying about camera angles and lighting.  So the only picture I took of a quilt was this quilt hanging on the rails above the Books & Magazine booth.

This quilt fascinates me because of the block construction.  Can you figure it out?

 

Working at the Quilt Show

Our Bee group is running the Used Books and Magazines concession at our Bi-Annual Quilt Show (Northwest Suburban Quilter’s Guild).

I didn’t get a chance to walk the show yet, but this was my view as I waited on customers.

Tomorrow I will go looking and shopping after volunteering again for four hours.  Working keeps me from seeing all the wonderful quilts, but it also helps prevent me from buying fabric and gadgets I don’t need ! ! !

Binding challenge

This morning a friend came over to see my new long-arm machine and to try it out.  She is an award winning quilter and does all her quilting herself on her domestic machine.  At first she did not like quilting on my machine because she felt like she was too far away from the quilt.  However, as we played around, she became more relaxed and did some great free-motion quilting  (see vine of hearts at top section).  When she tried out the groovy board (Baptist fan) and the panto-graph (below the Baptist fan), she really enjoyed the process.  I think she will be back!

I have been commissioned to do some binding on an antique quilt.  The quilt is not in good shape, so this will be a big challenge for me.  The quilt was originally  bound with a yarn blanket stitch which is coming apart.

In some places, the blanket stitch is completely gone.

The construction of the quilt is interesting in that all the squares are double fabric – red and black fabric on the outside and scrap fabric on the inside.

I am not restoring the quilt, just putting on binding to hold it together.  Here is a section that is very badly worn.

The person commissioning this binding project will not be using the quilt but rather folding it at the end of her bed.  It has sentimental value to her.  The quilt is obviously a utilitarian quilt and was tied instead of quilted.  I am basting the edges closed before I sew on the binding.  It took me almost three hours this afternoon to prepare three sides for the basting process, but I wanted to make sure there was a good foundation for the binding.  The quilt is also very heavy and will keep my legs nice and warm when I do the hand sewing!

 

 

 

 

 

Binding done

Binding for a friend – completed today.  

 

A finish and a complaint

All finished……………the twin quilt………….

Several years ago, our Bee group exchanged these slash blocks and I made a quilt right away,  I quilted it on my domestic machine and had such a hard time getting all that bulk through the small throat of my machine that I vowed to never do that again.  The only problem was that I had a twin quilt for the other bed in the guest room and what would I do about the quilting?  Problem solved…………I bought a long-arm.  Kind of an expensive solution, but it worked!

Here is a close-up on my basic meandering (and Winnie the Pooh with Piglet)………………….

Compared to the shaky and uneven lines of the first quilt (with Winnie the Pooh and Piglet again)………..

 

And now for the complaint……………..I love Panera and their food.  Today I purchased a tuna sandwich to take home for lunch.  Doesn’t it look good?

It was good – EXCEPT – I had to re-make it.  Why do they always put a huge lump of tuna salad in the middle and not spread it out to the edges?  Most sandwich shops do the same thing – a big glop of tuna salad in the middle and nothing on the edges.  Just a silly complaint on a hot Monday in September.

 

 

 

 

Good Day

It is always a good day in my opinion when I get a lot accomplished.  I finished quilting my quilt, got it trimmed, and machine sewed the binding on.  Now all I have to do is hand sew the binding to the back of the quilt.

 

Most of my day though was taken up with cutting apart tee-shirts, fusing interfacing to the tee-shirts, and then trimming them down for making a tee-shirt quilt.  This is the beginning.  There are a lot more tee-shirts to go, and some designing to be done.

It felt good to make progress with these two projects.

 

Labor Day sewing

Block #3 from the Fat Quarter Shop arrived the other day and I decided to work on that today.  I cut out all the pieces and when the first instruction was to sew these teeny tiny pieces together, I decided it was time for lunch.

After lunch those pieces still did not entice me, so I loaded a quilt on the long-arm and got started doing some free-motion meandering.

Loading the quilt was tedious as I opted to not use the Red Snapper system.  The Red Snappers add bulk to the rollers and since this was a twin size quilt, I did not want any more bulk.  I pinned the backing and quilt top on to the leaders instead, which takes quite a bit of time.  The actual quilting went quickly and I got close to the end of the quilt before taking a break for supper.  After supper, I decided to tackle those little pieces from the Fat Quarter Shop Block #3 and before I knew it the whole block was done.

My sewing labors on Labor Day resulted in a cute basket block and  another UFO 95% quilted.