Yesterday, I made the hanging sleeve and binding for the butterflies quilt, applied the binding to the front by machine- and discovered that I lacked about 15 inches of binding to finish the job. Not happy! Back to the quilt shop today to buy, what, one fourth of a yard? I also cut the muslin strips to apply to JoAnn's art quilt that has no extra batting and backing. That will be the next project on the long-arm.

A much younger Avery next to my kitchen houseplants.

I also sprayed my schefflera, which has developed a sticky coating on the leaves called "honeydew." Even Avery noticed it when he was here before the beach trip. He has always loved this tree, and can never resist giving it a tap to bounce the branches. This time his hand practically stuck to the plant. It has an insect problem called "scale." Then some ants moved in to eat the honeydew. It now resides out on the screen porch instead of the kitchen. Hopefully, after another spray in two weeks, the problem will be solved and "Betty Lou" will be bug-free.

Here is another blog referral: I spent WAY too much time fascinated by the photographs and posting from the San Francisco whale watch company. I have never seen a whale except at Sea World, and if we ever go to San Francisco again, I'm going to sign up for this adventure!

Yesterday I trimmed Debbie's butterflies quilt- losing some of the quilting in the process. The floral fabric used by her grandmother for the sashing is a rather loosely woven cotton that has frayed badly at the edges over the forty years or so since she started this project. I had to trim a quarter to a half inch off the edge to get to the intact border fabric. One strip had frayed at least an inch, so I made an applique "band-aid" from a strip of folded muslin. Then I did a very tight stitch around the whole outer edge to keep "our" quilting stitches from unsewing themselves.

I went up to my sewing room to audition binding fabrics. I liked both a sage green and a rich brown that matches the butterfly torsos, but don't have enough of either. Getting ready to go shopping! Always a good thing.

Here is a heart-warming note from my sister-in-law Debbie: "When I see (my quilt), I'm reminded of pajamas, dresses, shirts and stuff my Grandma used to sew for us. She always saved every scrap and used them in her quilts.I like the idea of "kisses from Grandma" too." This is what it's all about!

I also rummaged around and found a perfect already-made hanging sleeve for niece Amy's butterfly quilt. I had made a white-on-white sleeve to hang one of my quilts in a show, and then took it off later. Last night I got the top half of it sewn on while we watched an old movie on TV called Bridge to the Sun, about an American woman married to a Japanese man who was deported with him to Japan at the outbreak of the war. Quite a good flick.

Unfortunately, my sewing room is such a wreck that I spent at least two hours putting things away so I could find my cutting table. (LOL) I started a studio transformation last February that got stalled when I went back to work teaching school from February to June. I need to get rid of lots of stuff that I don't use or need. Yesterday I went through ONE of my scrap drawers and cut triangles and squares for scrap quilts. These were just the dark blue ones. I actually threw out a LOT of little scrap pieces. Now on to the rest of the color wheel. This could take awhile!

It's getting better!

Yesterday, I got the OK from my SIL Debbie to add more quilting to her grandmother's butterfly quilt. So I spent a couple of hours doing some "Jeannie" flowers on the sashings. There is not a noticeable difference on the front since the thread blends in to the flowery sashing fabric. (Except that the sashings don't pouf out like they did before.)


But, oh, the back! I am so much happier with it now. Once I work on some of the stains and sew down some of the pleats, this could almost be a reversible quilt with a beautiful white backing!

The sashings are not any straighter, but they sure are prettier!

Now I must go shopping either in my stash or at the quilt store for a binding fabric. I am thinking of the light mossy green in the sashing leaves, but will audition several possibilities.

I have a new project for a customer who is a member of the Cyberbee, a local quilt group to which I have belonged for about fifteen years. I am not ready to post photos of this art quilt yet, but I hope to once she has given the quilt to her son for his (late) birthday present. This lady is a quilt artist, but due to getting on in years, she was having trouble maneuvering the quilt under her sewing machine for free-motion quilting. Here is what she wants me to do: quilt music notes in plain white areas, put wood grain on a guitar, and write the names of both rock musicians and classic composers around the border! How fun to add "Van Halen" and "Rochmaninov" on the same quilt!

Challenges: this quilt is partially quilted and has practically no extra backing or batting on the borders. Does this sound familiar? This is the second quilt in a row with those problems. However, JoAnn's quilt is lovely and flat and even so I am not expecting the pucker problem. I will have to sew some muslin strips to the borders in order to write the names.



By the way, in yesterday's comments, my friend Cathie (Cleveland Girlie) referred to those puckers on the back as "kisses from Grandma." I love that image!

Turning an old quilt top into a quilt

It has felt good this week to be back at work on my Gammill long-arm quilting machine. Sad to say, it had not been used since about March or April, when I quilted the Green Man. Between teaching school and traveling quite a bit on weekends, I just could not find the time or energy. But I kept giving Grendel (the Gammill) some long drinks of oil and an occasional warm-up, and she has performed admirably for the past two days.

I decided to do something about the partially quilted butterflies quilt that my sister-in-law Debbie asked me to finish for her. It is one that was started by her late grandmother, Helen Stewart of Indiana. Here is a picture of Debbie's daughter with Helen, which must have been around 1977. I have already done two others for her, the stars pictured yesterday and a basket quilt that I really liked. It had lots of white space to show off some feathery quilting.

The challenge this time is that she had hand-quilted about two thirds of the blocks. The whole thing has been sitting in a bag for about forty years or more. I originally thought I would hand-quilt the remaining blocks, but after more than a year decided I would never get around to it. So, I mounted it on the Gammill and had a go at it.

You might notice that the sashing just does not match up, and there is a lot of fullness in the seams. Debbie says that in her grandma's later years, her eyesight was not that great. Or maybe this is one of Grandma's UFO's that got put away because it just didn't come out quite right!

I made a couple of templates by tracing the quilting motifs, then marked the designs with a blue washable marker. Helen had used pencil for her markings, which is still showing behind her quilting. Basically there is outline around each butterfly, a big cross through the center, and a fan design in the plain corners of each block. She also did a quarter-inch quilting line inside each square. Below is a block quilted by hand by Helen.

Here is one that I machine-quilted. Here are hand-quilted blocks next to machine-quilted ones.

Now, I hate to mark quilts, hate to use rulers, and don't have a stitch regulator. And this quilt only had about a half inch of extra backing and batting on the sides. When you have to clamp the sides, that leaves no room for using a ruler.

But I have done the best I could. One of the problems of putting a partially quilted piece on the long-arm is that you might get puckers on the back. Oh yeah, that has happened here, too. The backing is white muslin, or perhaps an old white sheet. It has lots of fullness, and a few puckers and pleats.

But you know what? This is not going to any quilt show. It will be going to one of Helen's grandchildren, great-grandchildren, or possibly even great-great grandchildren. How lovely that they will now have a finished quilt to inherit, instead of a project in a plastic bag?

I have emailed some pics to Debbie to show how it looks with just her grandma's quilting motifs, and suggested that I add some quilting to the sashing to get it to lie down a little flatter. Then I need to decide what binding to use. And the whole thing needs washing very badly, as you can imagine. But doesn't this old project have a little charm?

Butterflies and Bees

Yesterday we drove my father to my niece's house in Durham, NC, to meet up with my brother for the drive back to Boone. My niece and her family live in a former boarding house in an older section of Durham. It was originally from 1926, with a new wing added a few decades later. It has eleven bedrooms, most of which have been converted to office space, exercise room, and toddler play areas. Anyway, while on the tour, I saw this scrappy star quilt that I finished for my sister-in-law. It was hanging in an upstairs hallway, and looked great. Debbie had brought me three quilt tops that her grandmother had started back in the 70's or earlier. This was one of them that she had given to her daughter Amy. This one had very poor piecing (done in Grandma's later years) and took a lot of quilting to get it to lay flat.

Then, Amy showed me another quilt she inherited that was in a plastic bag waiting to be hung. This one was finished, but had no hanging sleeve. Since she has two babies and no sewing machine, I brought it home with me to add a sleeve. It smelled musty and moth-bally, so it is airing out on the lawn between two freshly laundered sheets. This one has very graphically pleasing bright butterflies on a white and mint green background. Check out the calico and some wild old prints.The butterflies have blanket-stitch around the edges, and black stem stitch antennae. Here and there are little embroidered yellow circles.

Upon closer inspection of the hand quilting, I thought at first that she used variegated thread. Then, I realized that she used white thread, but never removed the blue markings from the quilting motif.

It is nice that Debbie and her family value her grandmother's creations. I have one more to do for her that is partially quilted by hand. I think I am going to attempt it on the Gammill and pray to St. Quilta the Comforter to make it smooth and pucker-free. Debbie says there are many more still back in Indiana, sitting in bags and waiting to be quilted. I told her to bring 'em on!

While I was outside to air the quilt, I noticed a lot of activity on my giant lavender plant near my garden pond. If anyone is wondering where the honeybees have gone, they are in my yard! Some of these little guys had so much pollen in their pouches, I don't see how they can fly. Notice the huge yellow spot on the leg.

And here are some Shasta daisies that decided to bloom while I was on vacation.