Quilt-lets Day 2

What I have so far------pattern source: Nancy Halvorsen's Calendar Quilts & Stitcheries.

October, November blocks

I had reversed the orange-y plaids at first and had to do some un-sewing to get them more to my liking. The navy with stars I used for the first border shows up better in person.

September and December

I borrowed a trick from the designer of Freckles stitcheries. I had started on a set of snowmen blocks last spring---the one that is done is shown HERE . She has you mix one strand of say, a brown with two strands of a light color so it will show against a light background. I did this for the beard and hair and in retrospect. I should have done for the turkey collar (shown above) or followed Nancy's direction for color, LOL. Again, not so hot picture.

August

I pulled the Williams Inn fabric line from last year's Be Attitude blocks for this one as I thought it looked more summery.

Binding pile---just finished the pressing

Paula, The Quilter asked me in comments how I planned to quilt these. I thought that was a good question since many of us do these little embroidered pieces and incorporate them into quilts often with pieced elements. I know I have seen them with an all over cross hatching maybe an inch or 1 1/2 inches across. If my blocks were bigger I would probably do that. Actually that might be the more classic way judging from our quilting ancestors penny squares. I would use it on my Bird Brain Santa blocks when/if I ever get that one done, LOL. Since I am not fond of tight stippling in the first place and hate to free motion, that would not be my first choice but yet, the blocks need something.

The stitchery part of these blocks is about 8 x 10 at most, a few are smaller and then only because I re-sized them on my scanner. They don't really need a whole lot since they are not all going to be joined in a large sized quilt. On the previous blocks I have just done some SID near the stitching with monofilament thread and even then, just on a key element of the block. The pattern calls for a running stitch border near the verse and I will use a #8 perle cotton to do that for a kind of long stitch hand quilting. Each one also has a button to be sewn on and that will tack it as well.

But after reading Paula's post, I see that she posed a question to her readers would you cross over the embroidered thread with your quilting line or try to work around it. I am going to assume that she is going to machine quilt her piece. If you were hand quilting, it is really easy to slip the quilting needle under the embroidered line and keep on quilting. I love to hand quilt but who has time these days? It might be more stopping and starting in machine work if you didn't continue the quilting lines all the way across the piece or do some sort of custom work in each block. Like anything else, you almost have to study each block and let the quilt talk to you, tell you what it needs.

I will be back to pulling fabric and pressing it for the backing followed by some spray basting and then quilting after lunch. Hand finishing for binding and the aforementioned quilting line and button application will follow that. I'm getting closer anyway...............

Thanks for stopping by