Off the Frame…

…and on the frame!

I made this quilt a couple of years ago (yeah, yeah, old story!). I have decided to play a little and use different thread colors and quilting motifs.

Buddy enjoys consulting with me on the quilting.  His input is very important!

Below is a quilt I am making with my beginning quilting class.  It is a little retro but it teaches a lot of piecing fundamentals.  I think I will be quilting it on my Bernina and the walking foot. 

It is a little more red than I had planned but I really do like the simplicity. There is no big print to “pop” but oh well…

Diane

P.S. Don’t you love this font? It reminds me of my days in 3rd grade, teaching cursive!

Grrr!!!

It occurred to me the other day that I had done no quilting on my frame since August! So I pulled out an old project, cleaned and oiled my machine and got ready to do some quilting.

I wasn’t sure what color thread I wanted to use so I wound a small bobbin and did some practice on scraps from the quilt.  The color and tension looked good so I wound some more bobbins, rethreaded everything and went to work.

(The blue tape is for me to know how far I can quilt-sometimes I forget or mis-gauge)

I did one row and rolled the quilt and this is what I saw:

I think that I put my bobbin in incorrectly(I was having a little trouble) resulting in this mess on the back. Grrr!!

It could have been worse: those stitched will be easy (relatively speaking) to pull out.

I always suggest that you fix mistakes before stopping for the day but I just didn’t have it in me. So now I know what I will be doing tomorrow!

Diane

And Another One Bites the Dust

Diane

Trying a (sort of) New Technique

I am still plodding along on my postage stamp/granny square quilt blocks.  Most of the blocks look like this right now:

I was adding quarter-square triangles as I sew and was planning to add the corners and trim the squares at the end. It seem to take forever because the triangles are bias on 2 sides so that the outsides will be on the straight grain.  The bias edges have a mind of their own and need to be pinned as I sew.

The last block I made looks like this:

That is because I added squares around the outside (the black fabric) as I sewed and them trimmed the block into a square (sorry no picture !).

Now before the quilt police come and arrest me, I am aware that my outside edges are all on the bias.  Before I trimmed, I used a little spray starch to help stabilize the fabric.  And there are sashing strips between each block which will also help to keep the blocks square.

I am doing this because it saves lots of time.  I am able to piece and square my blocks in less time than it was taking me to piece as I was before. This makes me happy.

And when Momma is happy, everybody is happy!

Thank You, Elvie!

About 2 months ago I attempted a toe up sock:

After casting off, I found that the rib was very tight.

So I started another sock and tried a different bind off:

This one was a little loose.

Then I forgot how to do my toe up cast on.  I tried several times but it just wasn’t coming out correctly.

Then our knitting guru returned to the shop. Elvie said that as long as I was making one sock, I might as well make two.  She showed me how to cast on and set up for doing 2 socks at a time.  Yay!

Elvie also suggested that I do a regular bind off but use a much larger needle.  Since the socks are only for me and I still consider myself a novice (excuses, excuses) I am not super concerned about the socks being exactly alike.  And I am sure that I will be doing a lot of explaining about why I am knitting two different socks at the same time!

P.S. Thank you Khris for my beautiful table topper! It has been out since January!