Thursday, May 13, 2021

I just finished my May miniature. Of course Stacia and Deloise finished hours ago and have both finished or worked on two other projects. Oh well, as Pat keeps telling me, it’s not a race.

This one was an easy sew except for having to put those blocks on point. I always struggle with it but I was a little better today. By blocking out parts of the picture I was working with I was able to get the row laid out properly and, although I made several trips between my layout and my sewing machine just to check, I didn’t have to reverse stitch any of the rows.

Thursday, April 15, 2021

This started out as a calendar block from my Block-A-Day collection. I liked the block so much that I put four similar blocks together for a huge 16″ block.

It was intended to be a donation quilt but it was so much work that very early on Stacia and Deloise convinced me (not a hard sell) to keep it for myself. Pat’s birthday was coming up and I didn’t have a gift (or an idea of a gift) so I made the blocks into a long bed runner. Pat’s feet get cold at night so this might help to keep them warm.

It took a long time to finish and the quilting seemed to go on forever. It is probably the longest thing I have ever made but it is a nice size and hangs over both edges of our king-sized bed.

UPDATE: This went to Kathryn

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

It was challenging but after a day and a half I finally have my April postcard finished – flower baskets. I’m not happy with the contrast between the background and the baskets but I wasn’t about to spend another day on the project.

The quilting is a very simple straight line cross hatch; I eyeballed it rather than marked it.

By the time I got to the binding I was more than ready to be done so I used my machine to stitch down the binding. It is a technique I’ve wanted to use but I’ve never felt I did a very good job on it. Since this piece isn’t going to win any ribbons it seemed like a good spot to try it.

In hindsight I think a double-fold binding would have been easier to work with, not to mention a space that wasn’t so short from corner to corner.

I finished the first row of this in June, 2015. It was a Guild project where we got a new row once a month. Needless to say I fell behind very quickly.

Five years later I picked up the project again and got both the quilt and the miniature to the sandwiched stage.

The project came up again as my March UFO Challenge and I very much enjoyed working on it again. The bright colours certainly cheered me up on gloomy days and on brighter days it made me want to be outside.

I think I used every quilting stitch in my quilting repertoire. The star, the diagonal boxes, and my new favourites – the mattress stitch and one-quarter from the ditch.

The miniature will be used for a Hands Across the Water Challenge; it is made using scraps from the larger quilt. When we planned for the event in March last year the theme for the challenge was Escape Into Colour. I’m hoping that when we are again able to host the event the theme won’t have changed.