February 26, 2011

Pinwheel Progress


The pinwheel quilt is progressing well.  The free-motion quilting is complete.  A week of ripping out stitches in the evenings, allowed me to get the quilting finished this morning.


Next is the binding, which I made this afternoon.  I used a red fabric with tiny white dots.  There are lots of polka dots in the pinwheels, as well as a fair amount of red (my favorite color) so I think this binding is just what it needs.

Round ten at The Old Red Barn Quilt Along starts soon.  Crazy quilting by machine - using all those decorative stitches built into your sewing machine.  Should be fun!

February 21, 2011

Free Motion Quilting - the good and the bad.

I am trying to learn to free motion quilt on my pinwheel quilt.  This is a challenging skill to master.  But practice makes perfect, so I am stitching (and ripping) and stitching some more.
This is a shot of an area on the back where things did not go so well! Loose loopy stitches are not a good thing - lol.  So the seam ripper will have it's day here.

Here's a pic of the top in an area where the stitches look smooth and neat.  Just what you want!  This gives me inspiration to keep going.

From what I read, it seems that every quilter and every machine have their own pecularities.  You have to find what works for you.  I set my machine on half speed, put the pedal all the way down, then I have a consistent machine speed and can focus on moving may hands evenly.  This has really helped me to keep those loops at bay.

February 14, 2011

Mini-Quilts



Thought I'd share some mini-quilts in progress.  These little quilts are so fun to make!  Some of them I just whipped up to test out a new idea or to try my machine when it came back from the shop.  A couple of these are postcard size.




But I love to make these for fun, too.  This one is a little bigger maybe about 9 x 12-ish.   Still needs to be finished :)

February 6, 2011

New Fabric For The Stash!

Well, I finally broke down and ordered some fabric online.  I like to support the LQS, but there are some things I want that they don't have.  Ordering online may be a bad thing to start.  I mean ANYTHING you want you can find in an online shop.  No more seeing an ad for a new fabric line but then not finding it at the store, so you go without.  Not to mention the hours spent online looking at fabric. 

Anyway, I went looking for some Amy Butler - her Soul Blossoms line. So I got a fat quarter bundle of that.


I like this just as much in person and I did from afar :)

Then I discovered this:



The Gypsy Bandana line from Pillow and Maxfield for Michael Miller Fabrics.  I love bright, happy colors and stylized botanical designs so this bunch really called my name.  They are a little brighter than they appear in this photo, and I LOVE them.  Check out that huge panel that was included!!!

Needless to say I spent several happy hours washing, ironing, folding and petting the new fabrics before putting them away.  Now to decide what to make with them . . .

UP