Fire & Water

Completed the class project from my local quilting class on Sunday night. I have to say I will likely never do hand binding again even though I do love the look and finish of it. It's just too tedious and irritating with the loss of dexterity in my fingers from the RA. I did use a bad type of thread for it so maybe someday I'll try it again but for now I will have to keep exploring machine binding.

So here is my finished project! I quilted free hand flame type designs in the small frame surrounding the center squares and the rust colored areas around the brighter orange star points. In the gray area I quilted one of Leah Day's designs called Underwater Rocks. I am going to use the quilt as a wall hanging. The colors go perfectly in my house :)

Jackie's Quilt

Years ago I offered to make a quilt for my mother in law and she picked fabrics out and gave them to me. Then I pretty much stalled out on any sewing projects because of not really having a decent space to work, and just having no idea how to quilt it on my own. Anyways, I recently got out her fabric and decided to try a basic pinwheel quilt since she said she liked the pinwheel design after I painted it on one of my jumps. I finished the top today and plan to get it basted together tomorrow. It's about 70"X58".... Large lap, sofa nap type size. I learned a lot making this and in a few years when my skill is better I will make her another one with better craftsmanship, but overall I am really happy with it. My first pinwheel blocks:

Progress on class project...

I finished piecing the project for my class at The Needleworks last weekend and then sort of delayed starting the quilting because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do on it.

Eventually I made myself baste the sandwich together and doodle some ideas with my ceramic pencil. I also looked through a bunch of Leah Day designs from The Free Motion Quilting Project. I decided to go with a design called Underwater Rocks for the grey parts, in a blue thread, but I haven't started that yet as I needed to quilt the centers first.

I decided on a freehand flame type design in the rust colored areas and stuck with my plan to leave the center squares and orange star points as is.... Puffy and unquilted, so they would stand out. So, I've done all the quilting in the squares, just have the grey areas left.

I decided to audition the design and thread color choice on a scrap of the grey batik (a well taken suggestion from many of Leah Days videos - to take the time to test things out and audition things) and I am glad I did because the thread I picked is too light. So I'm going to do another audition with a darker thread soon.

Once I find the right thing I'll finish up quilting this and have it ready for our last class, where we will learn binding. I am really looking forward to this part and hoping I can learn a lot. My one experience with attempting binding didn't turn out great and I want to get that technique down before I am ready to bind Jackie's quilt. I am more than half done piecing that and since I am ahead of class for tomorrow and can't FMQ at class I am going to work on piecing more of Jackie's quilt there.

So here are some pics of the project as it is right now. Hope you can see the quilting! I'm excited because this is the first quilt for which I have chosen my own quilting design.

Quilting class at The Needleworks

I am taking a quilting class with a couple of friends at a local quilt shop called The Needleworks in Saegertown, PA. We are making a small table runner, which I may turn into a wall hanging instead. I finished my "homework" for the first class over the weekend, but forgot to add this to my post catching up on all my latest stuff. So here it is.... I am really excited about how it is coming together.

A quick catch up on what I've been up to...

So I finished the Heart Flower and Feathers whole cloth quilt and had my first experience with binding. It didn't go well but it's done and I learned some things from my mistakes.

 I also began  making my first appliqué piece and I am pretty excited about how that is coming along. I based my design off of a pattern available in the July/Aug 2013 issue of Quiltmaker called the Fall Skinnie, "Hoo's there?" I changed it to make a spring or summer version though.
Here is what the pattern looks like:

And here is my version made for spring!!!

Other than that I did some practice of free motion quilting freehand spirals...

And I got my nine patch blocks pieced for the BBQA for February! First time doing nine patch blocks, pretty happy with how they ended up. I did make an error when I was precutting all my fabric for the whole project and I didn't cut enough piece for this and I don't have any extra of the blue so I had to border one block in the green but I think it looks good and it's neat to have the variation. Looking forward to quilting them!

Finished the quilting on Heart Flower and Feather Wholecloth! And my spiral blocks for BBQA!