Aug 23, 2007

goofing off

A lazy day here so far but that's okay with me. I took today off from walking since I go 5 days out of 7 and slept in a whole whoppin' half an hour, LOL. Miss Pippi seemed to think I needed to be up. I've been goofing off weeding out my music files and ran a couple of errands. Also been shopping online a bit.

The Bama Belles gave me some spending money for my birthday with the instructions, more or less, to use for me rather than for the donation quilts. That sort of eliminated buying fabric---did enough of that lately anyway!--since I only buy stuff for me when I have a special project in mind---which I don't at this point. So I found some used books at a good price to add to my quilting reference library.

I have been busy quilting since last Friday afternoon and have 6 of the 9 quilts in my stack done. Not quite one a day--some span two days and one day I did two small ones. This is the only one that I can show you as the binding will need to be done before those are ready for their official photo. I showed you this top and told you the story behind it HERE. It seemed easiest to just do an all over grid than go around the star points in the ditch.

Joy sent the binding for her two quilts with me but the only thing is, she cuts hers a lot narrower than I do. The only way I could think to use it was as a single fold binding and press the quarter inch back on one side of it. I got the quilting done rather handily but applying the binding stymied me. No matter which way I turned it, the fold was on the wrong side and seemed backwards to the way I sew. I ended up trimming off the backing and batting and sewing it back to front and then stitching it down with a blanket stitch so this one is done except for sewing down the label.

BUT I am not so happy with the results--the corner miters are not as neat as they usually are and there are spots on the back where the stitching shows up way to much. Still, it is DONE even if not quite up to my standards for my work. Is there some trick to getting it lined up so it doesn't show???? I am thinking about substituting something else for the 2nd quilt she sent--the binding for it would leave me in the same boat.

Look what came in the mail today! Ellen, the founder of Wrap Them In Love sent this on to me. I love this gold on gold veined fabric which was donated by a fabric company to her for our donation quilts. I had told her that I could use some more if there was any to be had expecting it would be in a box like she did last time. I have no idea hoe much is possibly on the roll but it measures about 2 inches out from the center of the cardboard core.

Long time "wrappers" will recognize it as one of the long ago kit fabric companions---the other was a cobblestone looking piece in two color ways of red and blue. There was also a tone on tone vein in red and blue and a variation with a black vein on red and blue background. A decent shade of red actually--the blue not bad either. The hardest to work with was the gold with a red or blue vein though we certainly gave it the good old "college try". HERE are three quilts that I did in series from the blue version of the fabrics--The first one being Vogie's "Millennium Mystery" and the 2nd and 3rd quilts were done with the leftovers from the first one as I over cut, big time.

My friend in Kentucky also sent another box of backing fabrics that arrived a couple days ago---all different colors including a nice pink check. That's already out in the car. I am almost packed up and the meeting isn't till Tuesday, LOL. I already warned the quilt group that we may have to have a binding party so come prepared with needles.

Well, if I am going to get any quilting done on the basketweave top today, I better quit playing around. The cook is serving leftovers so that gains a little more machine time.

3 comments:

  1. I love the grid quilting on this one--the grid works into the stars perfectly! I am not so sure I would have though of that one! What a nice bolt of backing fabric! I am sure that will do for a lot of quilts!

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  2. Congrats on your progress - sounds like you are quilting up a storm! The backing fabric is great ... and so much of it :)

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  3. Ahhh....goofing off is a great way to spend a lazy August day!

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