Progress, not by me

My daughter has been working on the quilt she started last march.  It’s a Jelly Roll 1600 pattern variation. The center was finished in the spring and the borders added by November.  The quilt came out to play again this month.  My daughter did a very good job helping set up the basting frame and loading her quilt, then she pinned most of it herself.  I just helped a little in the end in the interests of regaining access to my sewing corner shelving, which was behind the basting frame.

Now she is machine quilting it in straight lines using the walking foot.  Every third line of quilting she is using one of the machine’s pre-programmed stitches and it’s looking pretty cute.  I think all that is left now is to quilt a bit in the borders and she can move on to the binding.  I think she is happy to see the end in sight.  I has taken her longer than she expected (but just about how long I expected!) to get this far.

 

 

 

My son finished his wall quilt several months ago, but I just recently got permission to take a picture.  He had a paper piecing pattern to make the fish blocks, but otherwise he did all the planning, fabric selection, measuring and cutting, remembering to add his seam allowances.  Considering how little help he asked for and accepted, I think he did a great job.

There’s no new  sewing to show on my own account.  I’m rather constrained by not being able to cut any decent amount of fabric yet (though the arm does seem to be mending).  I am finally getting around to sorting a dozen years’ worth of family photos though, so there’s a silver lining!  Now the trick will be to keep organizing any new ones so I don’t end up with a pile like this again!

It was late…

The hubby’s new favourite quilt photo…

At 11 pm last night I was browsing my photos looking for a cover picture for the pattern I’m writing for this one.  My husband glanced over while this picture was on the screen and just started chuckling.  There’s something about those sneakers that appear to belong to the quilt…  “Hi there, I’m Scrap-Bob Square Quilt…”  Pretty soon we were both in the middle of a pretty strong giggle fit.  What can I say, it was late…

Scattered Leaves “trending”!

On Friday I listed my Scattered Leaves pattern as a free download on Craftsy.com.  There have been a few downloads of the pattern since then, and yesterday afternoon I noticed that the pattern had shown up on Craftsy’s list of 20 “trending” free quilt patterns.  It was at #19 when I noticed it, and now it’s at #3! 

I breathed a sigh of relief at the first download, getting over that “what if nobody wants it” worry.  Now I’m grinning from ear to ear.

 

Back in my quilting corner progress is almost non-existent still.  Cutting fabrics still hurts my right arm, and I’m not ambidextrous enough to trust the sharp blade in my left hand.  Since I don’t have any more projects cut out ready to sew, I can’t make any progress piecing anything new.

Free-motion on small pieces doesn’t seem to strain anything, so today I put together a practice sandwich and auditioned some designs for the lone star runner.  I tried out “concentric circles”, paisley, swirls and pebbles from the book “Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters”.  Her instructions are very clear and I think I might get the hang of these designs.

I like the concentric circles (far right) a lot as a filler, but getting it down to the scale I would need in the background bits in my runner makes it very dense.  I hadn’t planned on quilting the stars themselves very heavily, so I’m not sure this is the right choice in this particular case.  I may do something simpler with straight lines instead.  I do have a quilt planned that this design would look great on though!

Not such a quick finish

When I started pulling scraps for the small lone star blocks on New Year’s Eve, the plan was to whip up a quick project.  I suppose it’s all relative.  I didn’t finish as quickly as I had planned, but the project also didn’t stretch over half the year or more, as many of my projects do, so perhaps I can call it quick anyway.

Here are the stars

which went together to make this runner

which, once I get around to quilting it, will live here:

I’m not at all sure how I am going to quilt this.  I think it will have to just sit there unquilted while I hope ideas will pop into my head. Once it’s quilted I plan to bind it with bright scrappy strips.

At the some point I’ll find a use for the 3 orphan blocks.  It’s interesting how fabrics play together or not.  I was sure the red and yellow star would go well with the others but as much as I love it it just didn’t fit with the rest, so I set it aside for now and made the pink one to take its place.

At a standstill

Quilting slowed to a standstill here shortly after my last post.  My ambitious plan to tame my scraps also ground to a halt.  It seems it is possible to do too much ironing and cutting at a sitting.  Into day two of scrap taming my elbow became very sore and grasping, pulling or lifting hurt.  A touch of Quilter’s Elbow, perhaps?  Clicking a mouse or typing for any length of time was also out.  Hand quilting too.  Humph and grump.

I have been resting the arm, and it now only aches a little bit now and then, so I am going to try some sewing again today.  Yay!  On the agenda are two or three more small lone stars, followed by a little bit of hand quilting on the Canada quit.  And yes Mom, I will not overdo!

Because it just feels wrong to post without a picture or two, here’s a look at what I got done on the Canada quilt before the interruption.