Hoping and Waiting

We’re still waiting to hear about our boy and when we can go. Hopefully it’s soon. I’ve been keeping busy in the garden, mostly weeding and doing a little planting. Not much rain the last 3 or so weeks, but praying we don’t have a drought again this year. Just have okra left to plant and sweet potato slips if I can get any to grow. The sweet potatoes appear to just be molding…

E’s quilt is slow-going but enjoyable. While quilting, I’ve started watching various kid shows and movies on Netflix previewing things to check appropriateness. Cute show that I came across the other day was Shaun the Sheep. Not great for helping learn English with no dialogue but funny.

Anyway, just two blocks finished and some sashing. I am concerned about the blue water soluble markers but only use them on the ultra light spots where the white chalk doesn’t show. Never heard of anyone having trouble with the blue reappearing but still.

It’s hard to see the quilting in the photograph but below are my templates I resized from various sources. Nice contrast to the star blocks, you agree?

Basting

Last week I finished all the blocks for E’s quilt and started deciding the layout. Above is what I came up with and I thought something wasn’t quite there about it. Showing the picture to my mother, she suggested another dark border around the group of star blocks. Ah ha! So Tuesday I ran out to the LQS and picked an extra navy bit for another border, the backing, and the batting.

I switched the bottom right two blocks and made pieced the extra border. Much better! and more complete looking.

I finished up the quilt top Wednesday and now am basting the layers together (of course with a helper) and thinking about the quilting pattern. Any suggestions? The back is a light tan with blue and red flora (should show the stitches well!) and I have navy quilting thread.

Preparing with a quilt

Serena of Evan Wren Quilting asked if I was going to make a quilt for our soon-to-be-here 6 year old son. My first thought was I’ll never be finished in time! But as I pondered it I realized that if I pieced the top with my machine it might be possible to finish in time depending on when we get him. I suppose if I don’t finish the hand quilting by the time he gets here he might appreciate it more because he’ll witness first hand my efforts for a gift. LOL Hard to say with a little guy though. :-)

So urged by Serena, I looked through a couple quilt books and thought the Union Star Quilt in Civil War Sewing Circle, The: Quilts and Sewing Accessories Inspired by the Era (That Patchwork Place) by Kathleen Tracy was perfect for a young boy. It’s not too big and if I keep to similar colors of blue and red he’ll probably like it. When I first browsed the book it was one of my favorite patterns and I had started setting aside some possible fabrics for it. After some shuffling these are what I came up with.

The last day and a half I’ve spent sewing blocks and have 4 finished and one more cut. I made a mistake on two but I’m probably not going to bother taking it apart and resewing them. I’ve already done some seam ripping to get the first 2 blocks to the right size. The 1/4 inch mark on my machine must be slightly off and made the finished blocks much smaller than should be. Most people probably wouldn’t notice the mistakes anyway especially with 8 more blocks. Would you have noticed them if I hadn’t pointed it out?

Quick projects

Sometimes I feel the need to do a quick project, one that will only take a day or less. A lot of my projects are seem to take forever since I like to do things the slow way, by hand. Do you ever feel that way?

I was meaning to make an apron for myself since September from this vintage pattern and decided Wednesday to just get ‘er done.

Used my machine to make this and am quite pleased that it was so quick even though it was a Simplicity pattern (it often takes me forever to figure out what the instructions mean). Even had enough time and thread to do a little fancy over stitching ( it’s about the only non-basic stitch on my machine ;o) ) on the waist band.

Merry Christmas!

Celebrate Handquilting blog

Have you visited the new blog all about handquilting? So far 23 bloggers including Caron Mosey, the blog owner, are contributing their knowledge. Today I blogged about my few tools I use while piecing and quilting. I feel a little out of my league writing anything since most seem to be long time quilters. Lots for me to learn!

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