Waiting

Hair done, sitting in the hotel waiting and sewing binding on the Trip Around the World quilt

Can I combine hand and machine quilting?

This is the trip around the world I am doing for my niece. Not finished the hand quilting. big chunk of not finished. Was hoping to deliver it to her personally when we go east tomorrow. Debating throwing it under the walking foot and finishing it by machine. Not sure how that would look.

Busy

Too busy to post about being busy? Frantic rush to finish off the two quilts that are going with us and a baby quilt to deliver before we leave. Mostly just fidly cutting threads etc.

A Finished Project

Completed a quilt yesterday. Presented it today and received lots of compliments.

I wasn't thrilled by the colours but they were by request. I think the brown is putting me off, maybe I should have used an off white instead. Found a pretty pink for the back in my stash.

Now only two more to finish before we leave on vacation.

Getting it done

Have been busy for the past few days getting things done. The deadline approaches for our trip to the east coast and the wedding. I have been making the Orca Bay quilt as a gift for the soon to be newly weds and the thought of it not being finished was eating away at me. However, the free motion quilting I tried first didn't work out, so I ripped it out and decided to hand quilt. Then the hand quilting was not going fast enough and didn't look as good as it should. Mulling things over I came to the realization that the problem was the basting. Yesterday I ripped out the quilting, took the layers apart and re-basted. Today I machine quilted using the walking foot and was happy with the results.

I tried something new, using hair clips to gather up the quilt and it seemed to work well.  Things went so well, I thought I would try the free-motion quilting foot again. Just on the sawtooth border to practice.

It came out pretty good. Now to get the binding done

Try it on Tuesday

Wanted to link up with Jo at Jo's Country Junction for Try it on Tuesday but wasn't trying anything new today. Until this evening when I tried a new spray on my roses to try and rid them of the aphids. I had been using dish soap and water spray but googled to see what else would work. One of the ideas was adding oil to the dish soap and water combo. They said not to spray it on during bright sunlight which we had today (yea! sunshine) so I waited until dark to go out and sprayed by flashlight.

I don't think you can see the aphids sitting there, but they are gone now.

On the quilting front, I am working on a new I Spy for an expected grandchild of a friend. This one is going to be a memory game also as I had a bunch of duplicate blocks, so included two of everything.

Working in the car

Have not managed to figure out how to use a sewing machine in the car...yet, so I was reduced to only doing hand work on the weekend. I chose to do some more blocks for my feed sack bow tie quilt. Still not sure of the layout I am going to use to put these all together, not even sure how many I have done, over 50 I think.

These are the ones I got done on the road trip.
And here is the Baby Charmer with the sashing

It is not too clear in the photo but it is laying on top of the border fabric, a multi colour pindot.

Very Busy Week

I have been very busy this past week and haven't been posting. After a full complement of shifts at work, we packed up and drove 8 hours to Massachusits for a B'nai Mitzvah. Arrived back last night and have still not touched a quilt or fabric except to wash clothes. But while I was getting things ready to go I did accomplish a few things.

I got another row done on Hopscotch and located the cornerstone fabric to finish the sashing.

I got the rows together on Baby Charmers (a pattern from Keepsake Baby Quilts by Julie Higgins). The first time I attached them the blocks were off by a bit so did some ripping and re-sewing. Still have to finish the green all around and a border.

Finished some more Aster blocks and decided I didn't like them mixed together. Think I will just sew more bowtie blocks on our vacation and maybe do the Aster blocks as a border or even a separate project.