Out of my Slump

For the past week I have had either seasonal allergies or a cold.  How does one tell the difference?  I have had all the symptoms of both, except no fever.  Coughing, coughing, coughing.

Anyway, after years of teaching school no matter how bad I felt, (because it's easier than planning for and dealing with the after-effects of a substitute) I went about my normal activities, but nothing creative.  No sewing, quilting, painting, or even a doodle.  I just didn't feel like it.

Today I decided that my projects were not going to magically get done by themselves.  I fired up the longarm and got a couple things marked off the list.

First were the pillow shams to match the white spring quilt I finished for Marge about a month ago.  I mounted them both on the machine at the same time on a piece of muslin.

The only disadvantage to this method is that you can't clamp each side of the pieces.  That's okay.  I went ahead and basted all around each sham as I went and they came out fine.

Next was a charity top that I promised to quilt for my bee member, Irene, at our February meeting when she gave it to me.  It was definitely past time to get it done.  It was a Warm Wishes pattern in soft pastel florals and baby fabrics.  My first thought was to use a dark pink thread, so I rummaged through my drawer and came up with this Victorian Rose shade.

Do you notice anything wrong with this spool?  Yes, it appears to have at least three different thread ends.  What in the world?  I wound off the thread until it appeared to be back to normal.  Then I tried winding a bobbin. 

Nope, not going to work!  Seriously problematic!  That cone is going in the trash.

Fortunately, the quilting went just fine with a nice new blue thread.  I did Fantasy Freehand Flowers all over.

The quilting looks nice on the rainbow-striped backing.

It has rained all day today, but here is a sure sign of spring.  A pair of Canada geese has moved into one of the ponds on my street, and are raising a brood of goslings.  Several times I have seen them outside of the fence and perilously close to the traffic on the street.  

Please, Mother Goose and Father Goose, keep those babies back in the pond and out of harm's way!

Baby Girl Quilt

I interrupted my art quilt "flower gardening" yesterday to quilt a lovely baby quilt for my friend Carolyn. It is one of my favorite patterns, Yellow Brick Road. The fabrics are soft pinks, creams, tans, and browns. It seems many new moms are choosing more non-traditional palettes for little girl's nurseries these days.

Since Yellow Brick Road is such a linear design, I like to soften it with curvy quilting, and for a baby girl, I went all out with free-motion feathers, flowers, curls, and a little heart here and there.

These fabrics all have a lovely, silky "hand" or feel. They are from our local quilt shop, Quilts Like Crazy. I can't tell you how lovely they were to quilt, especially after dealing with some of the tough, non-traditional fabrics in the Blazing Stars quilt project I recently finished.

Today is going to be so windy. We have turned over the rocking chairs on the front porch and already retrieved the flag that flew off our house and was working its way toward the woods. I hope the power does not go off!

Back on the Horse...Quilting Charity Quilts

After my near-disastrous quilting experience with the fiber curtains, causing hubby to ride in on his mechanical horse and rescue me, I decided to quilt some charity quilts today. I wanted to make sure everything was really working fine while my personal mechanic was on hand!

First, I quilted the little blue and white nine-patch from The Whacky Ladies Bee sew-in day on Thursday.

I used a line-dancing loop in the nine-patch blocks, and just whatever freehand I felt like doing in the alternate blocks.
I am always surprised at how charming these pedestrian little quilts become with some pretty quilting to add texture. When all the blocks are square, I like to add some curvy quilting.

While I had blue thread on the machine, I reached for another guild charity quilt top that was also blue and white. I actually put this kit together last summer at the Flower Cottage at Dix Hospital, when Jean, Roberta, and I went out there to visit the guild's fabric stash.

Some one else in the guild constructed the top, and I got it back for quilting. This quilt was REALLY linear with all those straight lines, so I did freehand feathers all over. I decided to use up all my bobbins with leftover blue thread, and I freed up quite a few!

You can't really tell on the back that I used slightly different shades of blue.

Well, maybe on this last corner, when the only blue bobbin I had left was this variegated one!

Now, this little rail fence will be passed along to another Cyberbee member who has offered to bind these. One topper, one quilter, one binder...a good collaboration!

Quilting Again

After a lapse of a couple weeks, I have had the Gammill humming again for the past two days. I finished the "music-themed" quilt. Have to admit, this is the first time I have ever had to charge a PITA charge. What's that, you ask? It means Pain in the A_ _! Not the customer, but the quilt was very challenging. I took a picture of the whole thing, but the computer is not recognizing the memory card that I used when I had the quilt pinned to the new design wall. The customer started quilting this project herself, but found she could not do what she wanted. PITA #1- the backing and batting was the same size as the top, making it hard to pin to the leaders. I sewed some muslin strips.

Here are some partial shots:

There are names of composers and musicians along the outer border. This was the biggest PITA! Many, many, starts and stops, and each little blub of thread shows well with this creamy yellow thread on black fabric.

There is an acoustic guitar to which I added wood grain lines. This part was not too hard, except that I had to research wooden guitars to see what kind of grain line they should have. Good thing...they are supposed to run straight along the length of the guitar, which is made up of three different pieces of wood on the top. Didn't JoAnn do a beautful job on the guitar?

The grand piano has music staffs running through it, to which I was supposed to add notes. But they did not show up too well, and were getting to be another PITA with stops and starts and burying threads. The customer stitched the staffs in a silver thread.

The bottom border of the quilt says "Strum those strings and tickle those ivories!" Much easier to do in cursive.

Today I pinned on the king-sized log cabin that I took in the day before my babysitting adventure. This one is in bright, happy colors, with my favorite kind of quilting: foliage, feathers,and some peacock feathers. There are some butterflies and dragonflies in one of the main prints, which looks like a Hoffman. I am using a Reed, or sort of yellow-green, King Tut cotton thread. So far, so good! And another quilt that is waiting will use the same thread and quilting style, so I should be able to transition to that one easily. This big boy is taking two bobbins to complete each pass on the long-arm. But I am enjoying it!

Heading for the Big Apple

I have spent the last two days quilting on the queen bed quilt for Lily's room. I am doing freehand vines, leaves, flowers, and feathers over most of the quilt. I spent a whole day trying to figure out how to mark the border for scallops. Duh- how did I ever make it through graduate school? I finally marked them with chalk, and am having a feather go around the outer curve.

We had three great days in the mountains last weekend, and even got a nice thundershower every day to help water the baby Christmas trees, grass, and flowers we have planted. It is dry in that part of the state as well. When we got home, a nice thunderstorm followed us and brought some welcome rain.

I am so excited---Found out yesterday that my husband has been invited to New York for a business trip in October. We have had some lovely trips across the country over the years, but not many lately. This one should be excellent- it is being held in the Waldorf Astoria, of all places! Not too shabby. I am saving my $$$ for some shopping and fun. We have had two other trips to New York, during which we visited the MOMA, toured Radio City Music Hall, went to Broadway shows, and did lots of walking. Last time we also paid homage to Ground Zero, a very sobering visit. The only plan I know of on the agenda is dinner at the University Club, which should be a treat. Actually, it is a little-known fact that NYC is my hometown! I was born in Manhattan, and my dad worked there for twenty-two years before relocating to Raleigh. We lived in the suburbs of New York and New Jersey until I was fifteen. So I have been there many times, but only twice since becoming an adult. Charlie actually knows the city much better than I do, because he had to stay there for about a month when he was training to be a stockbroker.

Actually, the MOMA visit was one of the highlights of my first trip back, but last time it was temporarily housed in Queens due to building renovations. I had been dying to see the Monet triptych of water lilies that takes up a wall the size of a ballroom. I surprised myself by preferring some of the other works I saw, such as colorful works by Matisse and Gauguin. But the piece de resistance for me was The Starry Night by Van Gogh. It had its own bench in front of the painting, where I sat and contemplated this gorgeous work with tears in my eyes at its perfection.

Weekend Projects

We decided to stay home from the mountains this weekend and get some things done at home. For example, we had a willow tree in the front of the yard that suffered from a killing frost last Easter, and resurrection of the tree was looking more and more unlikely. Charlie cut that down while the pit bull puppy across the street escaped from its fenced yard and tried to bite the chainsaw. Not the most intelligent creature, but very friendly considering its species.

In addition to going out to eat twice and having grilled steaks at home Sunday night, it was very pleasant to sit on our front porch and drink some wine Saturday night.

Since this was a "free" weekend at home, I decided to play with some of my projects. I got the border sewed on the North Carolina Lily bed quilt, and am going to attempt to scallop the edges. I pulled a purchased quilt off a guest bed to see if I can copy its border and make it fit my quilt.

I also finished the Lilly Pulitzer fabric top except for the borders. I am going to use black with white polka dots. I paid a visit to our local Goodwill store, which is in a high-end development, and is sometimes like shopping at a department store. I found a fuchsia skirt with amazing embroidered flowers, and might do some reverse applique to add some of those motifs to the border. Ha- I could call it Lilly Pulitzer Goes Slumming!

Then, I started thinking about the challenge quilt that I have to finish for the Carolina Long-arm Show in September. I am leaning toward freehand flowers and fauna. But, in case I decided to go with a more formal quilt job, I drew the same star and border on a piece of muslin, and marked some trapunto designs for practice. I sewed them yesterday with Vanish Extra wash- away thread, and started trimming the batting around the trapunto designs. I already snipped the top once, so I probably am not going to use this technique!

Finally, I thought I would experiment with thread painting on Solvy Water-Soluble stabilizer on the long-arm. I had this idea that perhaps I could stitch hummingbirds on the Solvy, then attach them to the quilt. Well, this technique needs some refinement! I used two layers of Solvy, drew my designs with washable markers, and started stitching. Right away I shredded the Solvy on the first design. I switched to a smaller needle (3.5) which worked better, but I still had shredding. I was using Permacore thread because I had that in the color I wanted, but I think it is too thick. Anyway, I now have these funny-looking little thread objects! I might try doing this on my Bernina sewing machine which would take more time, but probably wouldn't tear the Solvy. Plus, I have better luck using specialty threads on it.

Jumping Around

I can't seem to stick to one project these days. I have worked on about four different quilts in the last week. I was going great on quilting my round robin top, but have come to a crashing halt. I did the entire top white border in a detailed filler using King Tut thread on top and Bottom Line in the bottom. The top looked so pretty! May I add, this is the exact same thread combination I had been successfully using already except for the colors. But when I rolled up the quilt to advance it, I got a horrible sick feeling when I saw the back. The white bobbin thread looked really bad! Some of the thread was just laying on the back, there were little knots at many of the turns, and the backtracking showed up on the purple backing.

I started ripping it out, spent about two hours, and got about five inches done. Maddening! To teach it a lesson, I abandoned the project for a couple days. I am still mulling over whether to rip it all out, go with the good-looking front side, use marker to ink out the knots.... but this series of Round Robins is supposed to go in our state Quilt Symposium show the next time my guild hosts it. I know I don't want mine to be a poor example of my quilting. So, I'm sure I will be frogging for many nights to come. (Rip-it, Rip-it, Rip-it!)

I started working on a UFO that I promised my daughter-in-law that I would make for her sister. I bought several Lilly Pulitzer fabrics in bright tropical colors, and am framing four-inch squares with various black and white batiks. It is so cheerful and pretty! Her sister had bridesmaids wear whatever Lilly Pulitzer sundress they liked at her wedding on the beach in Nags Head last year. So, I hope she will like this.

Feathers and Flowers

I feel very thankful that we are able to head for the hills like we did this past weekend. It was wonderfully cool in the North Carolina mountains. We had a great visit with family and friends up there, and I did get to float in the new pond Saturday afternoon! It needs some improvements, mainly because the bottom is so muddy it sucks your feet under. Getting in was not problem since I just flopped down on my tube, but getting out is a different story! My window box flowers were doing just fine, which amazed me after two weeks of no attention. They must have had some rain.

Today I decided to Just Do It...that is, get started on my Round Robin quilt. But I experimented with some of my new threads first. The LAVA from Superior quilted just fine with a Bottom Line thread in the bobbin. No breakage at all! The sample is just a little too bright for this particular project- sort of like the FAD 5 colors. I also tried several shades of the King Tut's in the Cottage Sampler package I ordered from Superior. I liked the rosy pink shade the best, and have used it in the purple outer border and some of the inner triangles. I have not decided if I will use the same thread throughout, or switch threads to blend with the background fabrics.

Lily-bug Label

Lily's quilt is ready to be delivered to her this weekend. I finally made the label and sewed it on. I used photo-transfer fabric to print a picture of us from last Christmas, when Lily was six months old. I happened to be wearing a flannel shirt with flowers in just the right colors to match this quilt! Since I used yo-yo flowers on the front, I added a few on the label. I also found a ladybug button. Doesn't it look like Lily is reaching for it?

I added pictures of this quilt to a new album on my Webshots site, if you have not seen it in my earlier posts.

Lily's Quilt Top is Done!

Okay, here it is- Lily's quilt top, ready to go on the Gammill today! The flowers, letters, bugs, and even the bias tape are fused on and then applied with invisible thread and a tiny zigzag stitch. Can't wait to start quilting, then embellishing!

Originally, I was just going to spell out her nice, short, four-letter name. But at the beach, I noticed that her family all called her Lily-bug, even three-year-old brother Avery . That nickname works perfectly with all the dragonflies and the ladybug- not to mention the extra space at the bottom of the center block! Hope she does not mind when she gets older. When I was little my mother often called me Jeannie- Bean, which I did not like, and my dad called me Jeannie-Bird, which I loved. Lily has actually been called Bugs or Bugsy since she was born, because of her GREAT BIG EYES. Cute as a bug?