Sunday, March 25, 2012

Let the Quilting Begin!

I finally got the courage to baste the Florabunda top.  I got everything set up on Thursday evening and spent a few hours crawling around on my knees to thread baste the top.  Not my favorite part of the quilting process, to be sure, but good music on the stereo and the promise of a glass of wine when I finished helped make it a little less distasteful.  I may, however, have to find another place to baste quilts.  My knees complain more and more when I crawl around without the help of knee pads.


I've started the quilting around all the flowers in the center first.  I was going to do all the quilting with a "grape" colored thread, but I think I'm going to use a few colors - pale pink around the pink, yellow around the yellow and green around the leaves and stems.  I haven't decided how I will quilt the basket yet.  The backgrounds will have straight cross-hatching.


I also started machine quilting on the hand-pieced maple leaf quilt.


Our guild is having a show in May and I would like to have this completed by then.  I'm doing a medium stipple in the backgrounds and will do some additional quilting on the large maple leaves.  I don't know what design that will be yet.  And, the light border on the outside will get another quilted design.  I'll figure that out later, too.

That's what I'll be working on for a while.  I'm out of small, carry along hand work for the moment.  I'm thinking I need another scrappy hand piecing project.


Wednesday, March 21, 2012

What I've Been Doing to Avoid Basting

Nope, I didn't get the Florabunda top basted on National Quilting day.  I did, however get the backing fabric sewn together and pressed.  Then I went on to trim this top, make the binding, label and hanging sleeve.



Then I finished all the hand stitching on the cardinal and worked on the hand quilting on the chickadee.  I've got that done and now need to trim, sew on the binding, label and hanging sleeve.



These two will go to my guild's silent auction at our show in may.

Then, the weather was too nice, so I got some more yard work done.  Take a look at this beautiful gravel!



Oh, and today I took out the motorcycle on the first ride of the season.

Can you tell how much I dislike basting?

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Happy Dance!

I got the final borders on my Florabunda.  I still have to get the backing pieced together then basting.  I was looking through my supplies the other night and realized that I don't have enough safety pins to pin-baste this quilt.  Most of my pins are in the maple leaf quilt that is waiting to be machine quilted.  My choices are to take the time and machine quilt that soon (now?) before I can baste and hand quilt this one.  Or, I can just thread baste this one.  I think that's the option I will go with.  Since it is National Quilting Day, I got all my errands out of the way, the guild newsletter has been sent to the distributor and corned beef is simmering on the stove, I think It's time to get a backing made and the quilt basted!