Wednesday, October 18, 2017

I know you think everyday is a quilting day for me – Pat certainly likes to spread that rumor around. But today was “real” quilting, not just cutting, piecing or sandwiching.

I’ve been working (in very short burst) at quilting a Community Quilt I’ve had on the go for a couple of years. The stabilizing was all done and my goal, before Friday (our Community Quilting day), was to have it ready for binding. The free-motion in the centre of the quilt went really quickly. I used my standard looping pattern. The thread I used in the centre of the quilt hardly shows at all. In fact I had to feel the top to be sure I had all the blocks done. The backing has a pattern on it and you see even less of the quilting on the back.

I looked for something different for the borders but since getting it done was the priority I decided to loop the border as well. The quilting shows up more in the borders but, from a distance, my errors blend in well. By my lunch break I had one side of the border done so, as long as my machine behaves, I shouldn’t have any trouble getting it finished tomorrow.

Gail, the woman who hosts our hand stitching afternoons, has a long arm quilting machine and has said she would rent time on it. Today four of us spent the afternoon with Gail for a brief introduction to the machine. By the end of the afternoon we had all had a chance to “drive”. I’m really going to like this option for larger quilts, but I’ll start with something small (which I don’t have made yet). We are going to work in pairs, one quilting and one watching and learning. I’m pairing up with a woman who does feathers and I’m hoping to learn from watching her.