Thursday, September 3, 2009

Back To The Basics


I have been distracted by babies[well just one] & sunsets & purses & VTT & I need to get back to blogging about what I do nearly every day, quilting !
I have quilted 6 tops on the LA the past week since I came down from the mountains. However, none of them is bound as yet, my Guild here in Montrose, CO. will help me out with binding the QOV's.
The only one of these that I actually pieced was the baby quilt below, the others were all put together by my generous friends in the Huggy Bunch quilt group.

They never lay or hang totally flat it seems until the binding is attached so I will show you a photo of the whole of this quilt once I get the binding on in a few days.
This is the pink D9P baby girl quilt, I have cut the bright pink fabric for the binding. The baby is due this coming week so I need to get this bound & labeled pronto! The fabrics all came from my stash.


These next two are freehand quilted with square spirals to fill each block- Nancy pieced these & I think they are scrap quilts.
They are two of the latest four QOV's for wounded warriors


These next two QOV quilts were made by Meredith from a "twofer" pattern where you sew the blocks for both quilts at the same time & end up with two very different looking quilts
I think this is a very clever idea so I am looking forward to trying this method myself-it's on my list!
These last two did give me bit of a fit-they are beautiful batiks & after all my bragging about how I have no trouble quilting batiks it came back & bit me you know where!
I had constant struggles with thread breaks, skipped stitches & so on & I had to go painfully slowly & anyone who knows me will tell you that's not my speed. I spent a lot of time trying to solve my problems, umpteen different needles, speeds, re-threadings, bobbin & thread changes, checking timing[ugh], adjusting the needle bar height, ad nauseum until I was pretty cranky! Even ordered a new bobbin, ouch, $$$$-wise that hurt. The batik quilts are done, PTL, & I hope not to have these issues again. The only thing I didn't try [only because I didn't have a can of it] was to spray the fabric with silicon, some of the LA quilters on one of my groups say this helps, guess I need to get a can. I did however use "Sewer's Aid" [a liquid silicon] on the spool of thread & the thread path but I'm not sure it helped, I just struggled on through the process until they were finished.


This last one is a donation for a charitable group's auction, quilted with meandering flowers & leaves.

So it's now Saturday but the date on the post still shows Thursday & although there has to be a way to change that I don't know how!
I drove the 500 plus miles to the CO. mountains today, 9 hours across a lot of desert. It was 60 degrees when I arrived at 9,000 ft. this evening, Phx. hasn't seen 60 degrees since January I think!

4 comments:

joanne said...

Babies...what a wonderful distraction!! It seems you covered alot in your post, I'm exhausted just thinking about it. The quilts are lovely and something that I am completely fascinated with. I know nothing of sewing so this is so interesting to me. I am thinking of checking out a beginning sewing class one of these days...I may be a quilter yet..;p

farmlady said...

Did I read this right...,OH, ok, I re-read the paragraph..., you got to the mountains in COLORADO and it was 60 degrees. I thought you said Phx was that cool. I almost had a heart attack. I was ready to move.
All really lovely quilts. I love the "wounded warrior" quilts, but my favorite is the last one. It would be in my house, on my bed. That is a gorgeous quilt!

Miri said...

Great quilts! Love the twofers-twofers are so cool!

Dena said...

I just love the Disappearing 9-patch design. I have this method on my list of projects and hope to begin one soon.