Yay, Another Quilt Finished!

One busted machine later, I am finally done!  This turned out to be an experimental quilt for me -- I did some pretty ambitious (for me) quilting that I enjoyed immensely.  My technique did improve significantly toward the end of the quilt, so more than ever I'm a proponent of "practice, practice, practice!"

These are the feather details I'm happy to show -- some of the earlier feathers on this quilt do not stand up to close scrutiny.  I chose to do the feathers on the patterned parts and stippling on the solid white, whereas it might make more sense to do this in the reverse.  I thought since I am fairly new at FMQ, doing the more detailed work on the patterned sections would be more forgiving.

Feather detail on one of the bottom triangles.

Feather detail on corner triangle.

Since it took me so long to quilt this darn thing, I decided to go with a machine binding technique that I read about here on Red Pepper Quilts.  I do love the look of hand binding, but I gotta say, this technique is SO much faster. 

The stitch-in-the-ditch on the front binding blended in well after washing.

Top-stitching detail on the back side of the binding that results from machine binding.

All in all, I'm happy with how this quilt turned out and am even more excited to move on to new projects (and other WIPS).  PS. I love, love, love my new Janome 6600!

Some Bad News and Some Good News

Working hard on getting all my points to meet!

Wow, I can't believe how quickly the summer is moving along.  It seems like the boys just got out of school, and all of a sudden, over half the summer is already gone.

On the sewing front, I had some bad news.  I was busy quilting my Spirit Charm quilt -- it was sort of rough going at first because I had never attempt to quilt a full-sized quilt before.  Some of my early attempts at feathers were a bit shaky, but I started getting the hang of it after a while.  Well, about 2/3 of the way through, my machine died.  I guess it was taking quite a beating.  So that was the bad news.

Now the good news.  I took the plunge and bought a new machine, a Janome Memory Craft 6600P.  I really wanted the Horizon, but I couldn't justify paying twice as much for the Horizon, as beautiful as it is.  That's not to say the 6600 isn't a wonderful machine.  It's got all the options I want, except it's a little smaller than the Horizon (9-inch sewing space as opposed to 11 inches on the Horizon), but hey, it's still 3 inches bigger than my old Necchi!  Plus I guess the Horizon has an auto-tension feature that's super cool too.  Anyhoo, my machine is on order so hopefully I'll be able to post some time next week when it arrives.

In the meantime, I'll post a couple of blocks I've been working on.  Both these were done partially on my old machine, and partially on my mom's little Brother.  The Brother is a little plastic computerized machine that my mom uses only for the buttonhole function, preferring mostly to sew on an industrial Singer.  It actually sews really well; I was also able to finish a pair of PJs for #2.  BTW, the Singer is the one I learned to sew on growing up.  I remember we got it when I was in about kindergarten, so it must be 30 years old or more.

The block below is for a quilt from a quilt called "Jitterbug," from Layer Cake, Jelly Roll & Charm Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott.  I'm using a jelly roll of Punctuation by American Jane.  I've had it for a while but was kind of iffy about some of the prints and colors when I bought it.  Now, when I see all the prints together, in combination with the white Kona, I'm really liking how it's all coming together.

I love how the colors are coming together -- Punctuation by American Jane.

This second block, the ubiquitous bow tie, is a mere 6.5 inches, unfinished.  I was playing with some scraps and wanted to see how difficult it would be to put these together.  Each bow tie block uses two 2-inch solid square, plus and two 2-inch and two 1-inch squares of print.  It's a great stash buster, definitely.
 

You might recognize these fabrics from other projects.

I've Been Practicing...

my free motion quilting in preparation for quilting the Spirit Charm Pack Quilt this weekend.  Summer vacation is in full swing now, so I haven't been able to do anything but this practice square.

Farmer's Wife QAL - Week 2

I didn't think I could get these blocks done -- I've been sick pretty much since Friday and have not felt like (nor had any time to) sew. I didn't want to fall behind in only the second week, so here they are.

Block 3 - Basket

I'm not so great at applique, so am feeling somewhat iffy about the basket handle on this block. I might re-do it in a matching thread, maybe that would look better.

Block 4 - Basket Weave

Last but not least, I started a quilt from Jelly Roll Sampler Quilts, by Pam & Nicky Lintott. This is supposed to be for my oldest boy, as he really wants a quilt too. I'm not sure how old he'll be when I'm done, though. :)  The fabric is Hullaballoo by Urban Chics.

Block 1 - Tulip

Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt Along?

This quilt-along is being organized over at Ms. McPorkchop Quilts and Fussy Cut, mostly as a motivational tool for this long-term project.  The idea is to finish two blocks (out of a total of 111 blocks) per week.  Will this get me going?

Block 1 - Attic Window

Block 2 - Autumn Tints

At Last, A Finished Quilt!

I started this quilt exactly one year ago, and it languished for quite a while before I picked it up again to start the quilting process. I do like it, but it turned out to be longer and narrower than I would have liked. It fits on a twin sized bed, but with not much overhang on the sides. Oh, well. Next time.

I quilted a simple rectangular grid following the block outline.  Here's a picture of the back, which shows the quilting a little better.  As I was adding the binding, I was thinking that the backing didn't quite match the main fabrics.  I wonder now if I goofed and accidentally picked a fabric from a different design group, because that turquoise is quite different than all the other blues.

For the binding, though, I was able to find one more print in the same collection on a recent trip to my local fabric store.  It was a lucky find, because there were really no other prints from this collection left, at least in this particular colorway.

I also added a big tag.  No. 2 knows how to read and write his name, as well as "mom" so I thought it would be fun for him to see.

Just one last close-up!

Some Progress

Slowly but surely...Summer vacation has started for my littlest one, so I've been sewing in mostly 5 to 10 minute spurts, sometimes just a few stitches at a time even.

So what's left? One-hundred thirty-eight flying geese for a middle border, followed by one final border.