Stories from the Sewing Room

I was planning on a nice, leisurely pace of binding for Marble mystery this month. Then I got a reminder email from Cheryl that the final link up day is today. The menfolk went off to robotics practice Monday night and I sat there and did binding and started watching a series about the Roosevelts. I finished up the last bit yesterday. Here she is:

We had very strong winds, so this is as good as it got. I'll try to take a better picture on a less windy day.

Blooper photo. So windy the camera couldn't even focus.

Meanwhile, I had to prepare my fabrics for the class I'm taking with Linda Hahn at IHQS tomorrow. I think I shall rename my project.

Last fall I had ordered a half yard bundle to use. The colors were all much more intense than I expected. I wasn't super thrilled with my choice, but I dug around in my batik bin and found a couple of fabrics that I thought could work with part of the bundle. The bundle is from Anthology Fabrics' Periwinkle Glow line.

I feel like I need to take a minute here to say that I did shop my existing batiks prior to buying the bundle, but didn't have the right amounts of yardage in things that worked together. The fabrics I picked from my stash are the background Moda Bella and the tone on tone blue and lime green (both Island Batiks left over from previous projects).

Anyway, I've gotten my fabrics cut and my supplies gathered. I'm not totally convinced this thing is going to be all that attractive, but we'll see. Hopefully I'll learn some new skills. If nothing else, I will be able to spend the day amongst other humans.

I have been trying to work as much as I can while I have the work. Here are the quilts I worked on since last week. 

The first two belong to Marsali. She requested Lateral for this quilt made with Art Gallery fabrics. I used a peachy-yellow thread called Shortbread. 

And Textures for this quilt. Textures took me two days to complete. Each pass, set as large as I could get it, took one hour to stitch.

Legene picked Flirtatious Leaves for this baby quilt. She was concerned about the quilting distracting from the panel, so I used 60 wt. thread for the quilting.

Deb wanted Stipple on her quilt and was hoping for a green thread. The only thing I had that was remotely close was a Bottom Line 60 wt in Sage, so that's what I used.

Carol picked Lei for her quilting and wanted me to use black thread. I find that dark threads on light fabrics tend to lose stitch definition, but I did as requested. What color would you have used? 

If you're wondering about Beaker the hen, she went back to the vet for a follow-up appointment. Her toe did fall off. The white, swollen-looking area that we thought was pus is actually dead tissue. We are to continue to soak her foot in the disinfecting solution. We put her back into the coop Wednesday night. She seems to be doing okay. Much to our surprise, when the coop was opened to put her back in, there was an egg in there. We've had three eggs this week. We hadn't had any at all for months. 

Last night at guild we had Tara Miller from Quilt District speak. She showed us some of her antique quilts. I thought I'd share. 

This was a southern quilt from the 1890s ( I think? Late 1800s anyway.) Clues that it was southern are the very thick sashing and the thicker weight of the batting. I don't know if it shows, but the Baptist Fan quilting went in every direction.

Improv piecing from the 1890s.

Various blocks from the late 1800s. The pineapple block is wool. She said that you wouldn't see solid, true black cotton until after the Civil War era.

I believe she said this was around 1910-1920. I hadn't seen a basket like this before.

1940s, again with the every-which-way Baptist Fan quilting.

1940s

1980s, based on a free pattern from Mountain Mist batting.