I am excited to be able to share Kayle's quilt with you today. I quilted this one in September, but needed to wait until after it was gifted to be able to share. She's a newer quilter and this was her first experience getting a quilt long-armed. I was so excited when I saw this quilt. I loved the fabrics she chose. I hadn't quilted on linen before, so I was glad to have the opportunity to try something new. I loved the backing fabric too. And the pattern itself is cute. It's called Star Stream and you can buy it from Chasing Tigers on Etsy. I might have to add it to my pattern collection. Anyway, back to the quilt--Kayle selected Starry for the pattern and I scaled it down quite a bit. I'm really pleased with how it came out.
I know this one is blurry, but I wanted to show the iridescence that the linen fabric had.
We quilted my daughter's Water Drop quilt over the weekend. She initially had chosen a really cute snake quilting design, but once she started sewing it together she decided it looked more like succulents. I showed her a few different quilting designs that looked cactus-like to me. She narrowed it down to one called Sprockets, which to me looks like viewing succulents from above. Everyone besides me in the house thinks it looks like Beyblades. Anyway, she dithered for a while between the two designs and finally settled on the Beyblades. She wanted rainbow thread as well. She's really pleased with how it came out and I am still on the lookout for a quilt that could be enhanced by the snake design.
I showed her how to trim and square the quilt. I blurred her face for privacy or you would be able to tell that she's not a fan of the trimming process. We talked about various ways to bind and she decided she liked the look of traditional binding better than machine binding. Here she is working on attaching the binding to the front of the quilt. She's also not a fan of the binding process! 😂 She has started hand stitching the binding to the back. We'll see how long it takes before she has a finished quilt. This photo best represents the colors of her quilt.
I had the opportunity to watch a Bill Kerr & Weeks Ringle class on color theory through one of the guilds I belong to. After watching the pre-recorded class we were able to participate in a live Zoom Q&A. It was interesting and gave me things to think about and consider. I learned a few good tips and was thankful for the opportunity to hear them speak. However, I'm still of the mindset that you should do what makes you happy in your chosen creative medium. It's your quilt and you get to make the decisions.
I'm nearing the end of my secret project--it's on the frame and ready to be quilted this afternoon. Have you ever have a project where everything seems to go wrong? This is mine. This project has tested my patience in so many ways. I made so many boneheaded mistakes on it. The instructions were clear and easy to follow, and I have enough skill and experience that it should have been really easy. I just kept attaching things to the wrong sides. I cut all of my sashing about four inches too short. I then cut my correct-length borders too short and had to sew the wrong cut back on to have enough. I almost ran out of background fabric even though I purchased extra. I started to quilt it and realized I had set up the pattern incorrectly, so I spent yesterday afternoon ripping out the one row I had stitched, which was sad because it had stitched out beautifully. WHY??
Anyway, let's move on from that. I did finally get to vote last Wednesday afternoon. The weather was beautiful and the wait was a little under an hour.
The master bathroom is repainted with a slightly different color than before. All the walls are the same color again, so I can live with it. The window trim is partially installed, so I'm looking forward to having a fully trimmed bathroom soon. I'm really hoping the rest of the rooms go a lot smoother than this one did! I do not want to repaint every wall in the house.
I'll leave you with some pretty sunset pictures I took the other night. The real thing was much more glorious than my photos, but these are nice and we can always use more beauty in the world.
PS--I signed up for a free, year-long photo course at https://ayearwithmycamera.com. The next class starts in November and I'm going to try it. One of my friends has been participating and taking really nice photos. I thought I'd give it a try.
Linking with For the love of geese and My Quilt Infatuation.
The sunset photos are beautiful and your daughter has beautiful red hair. I'm with her on squaring a quilt and binding, my least favorite things. Good for her though on finishing and it looks amazing. I look forward to seeing a full front view of it.
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh, Anne-Marie -- that SUNSET!!! It knocked everything else out of my head that I wanted to say. Very cool iridescent linen fabric in your client's quilt. Did it present any challenges from a tension or needle size angle? Anything different you needed to do to quilt it so beautifully? It looks like the weave was looser than the quilting cottons rather than denser like a silk shantung or a bedsheet would have been. Your daughter's quilt looks AMAZING! She clearly had an excellent and patient teacher. I don't necessarily dislike the trimming part, but it does give me considerable anxiety because if the ruler were to slip and I accidentally sliced right up into my quilt, I would probably die an instantaneous, horrible death like the Wicked Witch of the West does when Dorothy dumped that bucket of water on her... ("NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! I'm MELLL-tinggg......"). What I hate most about the binding is pressing it in half before I can attach it to my quilt, which I have never managed to do without burning myself at least three times. But the hand stitching part is relaxing to me and exciting, as I begin to get glimpses of the finished quilt along the edges that have already been stitched down. I think it takes time for your body to memorize the rhythm of the hand stitching to where it becomes automatic and smooth. If she can stick it out for the first quilt or two, the binding process just might grow on her!
ReplyDeleteI do love the iridescence in that fabric, and the quilting pattern is great! I don't really like binding either so I feel for her but I do like it a lot more now that I do it by machine; that being said, I don't mind sewing it by hand and I'm sure that's better for her to start that way! I just get impatient now. (so many quilts, so little time!). I did very little quilting when my girls were little and I didn't have my long-arm or anything so I guess now, I just wait for the grandkids to grow up to show them! And oh yes, I have done that with a project! I had a spurt not too long ago where it wasn't just my quilting, it was everything! And when I kept making the same, simple mistakes over and over in my sewing...ugh! I must've been tired, too much going on, distracted? something... I kind of like to re-paint but the older I get, the more work it seems. I'm sure you'll enjoy it when you're all done!!
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