Baby Quilt: Almost Finished

Last weekend I was able to finish quilting the woodland-theme baby quilt on my Gammill before we left the mountains.

There were lots of motifs in the fabrics to inspire free-motion quilting designs.

Mostly I did swirls, leaves, and curves to sort of echo the circles in the border fabric and add texture.

I have also sewn on the binding to the quilt top, but have not hand-stitched it down to the back yet.  It will be a diagonal stripe.

This weekend I stayed home from the mountains in order to attend Art of the Carolinas in Raleigh.  I feel lucky to be only twelve minutes away from this venue.  I have met many students who flew in from Colorado, South Dakota, Michigan, Florida, and other faraway places to take advantage of the many classes and instructors who are here for this conference.  There is also a huge trade show which I visited before my class on Friday night.  I have one more class tomorrow morning.  So far I have finished one painting, but don't know what I will do with it yet.  It is a watercolor batik on rice paper.  I have one watercolor class to go, tomorrow morning with Tom Lynch.  Photos to follow!

Meantime, the Raleigh area is still enjoying the autumn colors.  It turned a lot colder on Friday, but it is still beautiful outside.  Here are some pictures of the pond at my Raleigh home.

Beautiful Customer Quilt

I finally finished quilting Carolyn Ormond's sampler quilt.  What a stunner!

The edges are both angular and circular.  She should have fun binding it!  I decided to use white thread and do mostly background quilting to make the dark motifs pop. 

Some of the shapes were too large to be left unquilted, so I added some lines to enhance the motifs.

It was a pleasure to work on such a pretty quilt!

The mountains are starting to change color.  We had some pretty rides last weekend.

We continued to work on the landscaping.  I moved a lot of dirt and gravel around as Charlie filled in with the tractor.

Just a few steps and the Great Wall project will be finished.

We will eventually paint, stucco, or add cultured stone to the cinder block, which is now painted with dry-lock.

We were all tired after the weekend...even the dogs (we had our grand-dog Roo with us.)

Trip Around the World

This weekend I finished quilting a queen-sized Trip Around the World quilt.

Because the quilt top is so linear and features squares, I went with lots of curvy quilting, and some floral shapes to complement the fabrics in the quilt top.

It is only partially quilted in these photos, but is now off the machine and trimmed.  I will do the binding on it as soon as I can, and return it to the daughter of the late quilter, Anne Vernon.  For this quilt's story, please see this previous post.  It only took me four years to get this done!  I feel bad about that, but I know that Anne's family will treasure this beautiful quilt.  The colors really glow.  I am going to get someone to help me hold it up for a picture of the full quilt.

Quilting in the Mountains

In a previous post, I wrote about setting up my Gammill long arm machine in the unfinished basement of our mountains cabin.  I decided that I could not wait until it was finished to start quilting again.   I had some projects I needed to get finished.  So, I drove up by myself last Wednesday morning and started cleaning up the sawdust and dirt down there.  That pile of insulation, plywood, and metal screening just had to stay in their corner and be ignored.

My husband's shop vac was up there.  Now this is a truly awkward machine, undoubtedly designed by men for men.  You have to bend over to vacuum the floor, pulling that bulky barrel-like tank, and using a little slot-like nozzle to do a whole floor.  Not good, but I did not want to use my good vacuum cleaner down there.

 

After sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping the floor, I put some sheets under the machine to protect the parts of the quilts that might drag on the floor.

One of the biggest problems in the room is that there is no overhead light or even electricity.  I used a whole mess of extension cords and multi-outlet sockets for the machine, light, bobbin winder, and hydraulic lift.

I set up a card table for the bobbin winder and some supplies.

I spent some time cleaning and oiling the machine, and turned it on.  Voila!  It fired right up and worked just fine after months of neglect.

Here is the first quilt that I did in the new location.  It is a baby quilt to be given on Saturday to a family member.  I don't think they read this blog, so it is okay to show it off.

I had some squares left over from another baby quilt.  For the center squares, I put two of each fabric so that the quilt becomes a sort of matching game to look for the same fabric.

The quilting is free-motion, with lots of swirls and ocean motifs to go with the baby's nursery.

This quilt is now completely finished and wrapped in its gift box.

I also quilted a small quilt for a friend of mine from the Whacky Ladies who has waited about eight months for her quilt.  She know I like to do artistic quilting, and let me have free rein on how to quilt all the monsters and ghouls.

The creatures were fused to the background, making a stiff surface to quilt on, but the area was too large to be left unquilted.  I went inside each one with some defining quilting stitches, and did echo quilting around them.

In the washings and borders, I did a straight-line meander in all directions.  The backgrounds behind the faces are quilted mostly with loops, but sometimes their names.

The thread broke quite often due to the heavy going in the fused areas.  And then there was this pieced backing!  All those seam intersections also made for a lot of thread breakage.

Well, it is done and Carolyn liked it!  On to the next one.

I got both quilts done in two days, and was able to enjoy the long Labor Day weekend with lots of family and friends.  In our little cabin we had six adult guests, five children under five, and four dogs!

Here are a few pics of the fun we had.

Gammill Assembly Complete!

Here she is in her new home!  We were able to park the trailer at the French doors to the basement.  That made moving everything easy.  The only thing I could not help lift was the 12-foot table,  so we got our excellent friend and mountain neighbor to help set it on the legs.  Charlie and I did the rest of it ourselves in about two hours this morning.

We made a few errors that had to be redone,  but that's life!

Now we just have to work around it while putting in wiring, ceilings, floors...not ideal but it's doable.

My Gammill's Next Adventure

When we were trying to sell our house in Wake Forest,  we dismantled my Gammill quilting machine and took it to stay with a foster mother.  We set it up at her house, and we both were able to use it.  

Last night we went back and took it down again.  We are taking it to its new home in our mountain cabin.

It is not an easy process, but my husband and son managed to disassemble it in about two hours.  

I have a great space for it in the basement of the cabin,  which unfortunately is not yet finished.  We are going to set it up and roll it out of the way as needed.

Meanwhile,  look what happened last weekend!

We had a deck-building party!  Lots of family and friends worked together to put up this large outdoor space.

We even had time for some creek-sitting and Gator rides.

Life is good!