Monday, July 30, 2012

Three quilters

Quilting has been happening in fits and starts around here this month, fit in around a few days of camping and a week of painting bedrooms and just enjoying a relaxed summer schedule, but three of us have each sat down at the sewing machine at least once.

IMG_6192DD added two more borders to her quilt.  Though she wanted an inner and an outer border she has discovered that she doesn’t much like pinning them on.  This is why her quiltmaking  stalled in April.  Happily there are only two more to go then we can baste it and get to the part she really wants to do.  She plans to go wild with a walking foot and all the fancy stitches my machine can do but that I don’t use.

 

IMG_6200As I type DS is finishing his wall quilt.  He paper pieced 3 sizes of fish blocks.  The smallest is one inch finished.  Eek!  He did a good job though.  He also pulled out the graph paper and figured out how to set the blocks the way he wanted, remembering to add seam allowances.  That is the back you see here.  He is going to bind the quilt by turning the sandwich inside out.  For the quilting he also plans to make use of the stitches that I neglect.

 

IMG_6197This past week I finally got around to finishing the Twister table topper I started in May.  I’m much happier with it now that it is quilted and bound. I tried 5 or 6 different ideas for freemotion quilting the pinwheels but finally decided that they needed the definition that outline quilting would give.

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Instead of making progress on any other quilts, I have been mulling over what to do with a stack of fabric I bought on sale in May.  I’m not allowed to touch them until I have run out of projects that are still in the piecing stage.  I think I’m down to just one, so I’ll probably get to the new stuff when the kids go back to school in late August.  I predict a quilting binge in September! :)

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Quilting Again

In early June I was focused on the garden so I didn’t quilt or blog much.  Hurting my back while focusing on the garden stole the last couple of weeks of the month.  This weekend I finally felt like my usual self again but steered clear of gardening and visited the sewing machine instead.
Since Canada Day was on Sunday it seemed appropriate to work on my “Canada Quilt”.  I hope I’ll find a better name for it eventually but in the meantime I finally gave it borders.
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Most of the fabric is “Greetings from Canada” by Thimbleberries.  The log cabin block centers were fussy cut from a print of postcards from various landmarks, one for each province.  The lighthouse and sailing ship represent Canada’s coasts, there are a delectable mountains block for the Rockies, wheat blocks for the Prairies, pine trees for the forests, and I’m saying the flying geese borders are Canada geese.  Of course I needed maple leaf blocks in there as well!
The strip to the right of the quilt top will go on the back. I don’t have quite enough of the backing fabric I bought last summer.  It is just long enough, but not wide enough, so I will cut it lengthwise and insert this pieced strip to make the backing wide enough.

IMG_6152This is the backing fabric.  The flowers are the provincial flowers of Canada’s 10 provinces and 3 territories.
Now I need to take a deep breath and try to make a straight 68 inch long cut!  I’m procrastinating, even making my binding first.I usually never get around to making the binding until I’m ready to put it on.
Once I do that, this quilt will go back into its bin to wait its turn for hand quilting.  Whimsy is only about one third quilted, and it is just too hot here these days to want to sit under a mass of quilt to move it along.  I’m guessing that I’ll start quilting the Canada Quilt next winter sometime.