{Post 1,054} Veins and Tendrils

Last post on this for tonight.  I am tired.  Like dog tired.  So is my husband.  I slept 14 hours the other night.  Feel like I could do it again tonight!  Machine quilting wears me out, so I try to do it in small bites.  Since I did two continuous borders on this quilt and changed thread colors, I had a lot of unrolling and rerolling on this quilt.

I ended up using a polyester orange thread that matched my orange Thimbleberries pumpkins nearly perfectly.  One of those "did I already quilt there" matches.  Here is a picture, but the quilting is hard to see.

Now for the veins and tendrils.  I will start out far and let you move closer:

You can see the meandering some in the last two pictures.  I also quilted a star in the stem of the pumpkin.  I double sewed the tendrils, purposely stitching a little to the side.  I could only last for 6 pumpkins.  More tomorrow!

~Joan

{Post 1,053} Corner of Feels Like Fall

Here is a corner I just turned of my own version of a pattern in Angela Walters' book, Free-Motion Quilting.  I'm still learning the ins and outs of my HandiQuilter machine and frame.  Now I'm quilting a simple zigzag in the cream one-inch-wide border.  Just ran out of thread and time, so a good place to stop for now.

My pumpkin blocks are the same size as the flying geese blocks.  I'm not sure the veins will be enough quilting to make it as flat as I'd like.  I am going to get a thread that matches the pumpkins as closely as possible and do a simple meander or small loops in them, then quilt the veins and tendrils in a dark brown.  I think I'll like that better!

My motto for quilts:  better to rip it now than to regret it forever.

~Joan

{Post 1,052} Feels Like Fall Quilting

Here is the beginning of my Feels Like Fall quilt top being quilted.  I am going to unsew the pumpkin veins and tendrils.  One cannot see the tendrils because the thread matches the background too closely.  I am going to do the veins on my DSM in a brown thread because they show up too much.  Fortunately, I only have 2 pumpkins to unstitch.

Here is my flying geese block with my own made-up version of a continuous-line quilting design (no stencil used):

I am marking the pumpkin blocks for veins with a homemade stencil.  My mom got me a book of quilt patterns a while ago in a huge 3-ring binder.  They were all supposed to be hand cut from the stencils provided.  As it happens, I only liked one of the maybe 30 patterns in the book.  Nearly all the patterns could be rotary cut.  It was a very old book--as in, older than me.  

I saved the stencil sheets for my monogram signs and for quilt stencils.  I knew I would not be happy if the veins were not fairly consistent from pumpkin to pumpkin (yes--I'm OCD).  

Here's what I did:  I traced the outline of a block roughly with a Sharpie on one of the stencil sheets of plastic.  Then I Sharpied lines where I wanted the veins.  Then I cut out a wedge to trace as well as the vein closest to the edge.  I used a Mark-B-Gone to mark them.  Easy peasy.

Here is the outside edge (which I just flipped over for the other side) and the wedge cut out.

This shows the edge of the stencil pulled away from the left edge:

Maybe I can make a couple more passes on the machine today at some point.  Time will tell!

~Joan

{Post 1,051} Sewing Table Today

So happy that I did about 35 minutes of "walking at home" this AM.  It takes me a long time to cool down.  I walk in my sewing room to a DVD.  While I'm doing that, my eyes wander to all types of projects to do/start/complete/progress on/plan.  While I was cooling down, I sewed a few more strips sets for my Tree of Life blocks.

I squeezed in a few minutes later to complete the centers of two identical tops that I will be selling later.

Here is my sewing table a few minutes ago, with explanation to follow:

Clockwise, starting at the back left corner is my HQ bobbin winder, then my plastic spinach box lid with my Tree of Life block parts in it.  Then my two bobbin holders--machine quilting thread on the bottom, regular on the top tier.  My iPod speakers, my orange water spray bottle for the iron to the right (out of the picture), and two stray pieces of binding that need to be put in the leftover binding drawer.

On my mini ironing board (with the blue striped cover) are two quilt tops I will be selling after they are complete...hopefully before Thanksgiving!!

The spoon handle sticking out from under the ironing board?  No idea :)

~Joan

{Post 1,050} Pillow Sham Fabric Quilted

My house is decorated for fall, such as it is.  I put out the same decorations I do every year.  If you want to see some, put "fall decorations" in the search box to the top left.  I enjoy fall.  The weather cooling off is one reason!

I am thinking ahead to Christmas decorations, so I quilted a large piece of one of my favorite cream fabrics.  I am going to make pillow shams to go with my new Christmas quilt.  The thread matched the fabric so well that I had a hard time seeing where I had quilted.  The blue Mark-B-Gone line is showing the edge of the quilted area.  I had to find it by Braille!

Yes, difficult to see on the front.  I wanted a subdued design, but this is ridiculous.  My husband said I should have quilted it from the muslin side.  A great idea, but too late.  Anywho--I hope to get the backs put on tonight.  I think I'll just put a binding on like I did the other set I made.

~Joan

{Post 1,049} Fifteen Tree of Life Blocks

My evening was quite surprising.  Susie had asked me earlier this AM if I wanted to spend an evening sewing and watching one of our favorite movies.  Of course I said YES!!  She was working on a skirt for work.  I think she made great progress.

Because I wanted to leave the cutting table clear for her to use, and using my HandiQuilter would have made conversation and movie-listening-to difficult, I decided to add a few units to my Tree of Life blocks.  To my surprise, I added EIGHT of them to my stack of finished blocks.

I am making my quilt a little larger than the original in Bonnie's book, so I have 10 more blocks to go.  Very doable. I am at that place where I need to add in a few more colors.  I don't have many greens, so I cut a few strips of those tonight.  

There are several browns for the trunks, greens for the tree bases, and sets of creams for the other triangles.  Sort of scrappy, yet controlled somewhat.

Stay tuned!

~Joan

{Post 1,048} New Light Up & Working

Our old light had two 25-watt bulbs.  The new one has two 60-watt bulbs.  Know watt that means?  Now I can really see the dirt on the carpet going downstairs!!

OLD:

NEW:

Can you see the difference in how much light is cast on the walls around the light??  Don't expect a carpet picture any time soon.  ;)

I was planning on starting the quilting on my Feels Like Fall quilt in the AM, but DH just dropped a bomb on me:  we are starting school TOMORROW instead of Monday.  Serious decrease in quilting time!

~Joan