Category Archives: Quilting

Happy Valentine’s Day

Cards, Quilting

February 14, 2021

There were two heart-themed bonus blocks remaining in my Splendid Sampler series and this was the year to get them done.

These small hearts were meant to be pin cushions but I didn’t think my girls had much use for one. I enlarged the hearts slightly and made them into cards. The heart outline is made of French knots – a lot of French knots. Once the cards were put together I decided they would be too hard to machine quilt so I hand quilted them. I don’t hand quilt very often but on a small project I rather enjoyed it.

This was a larger pattern but there was something about the pattern I didn’t like so I changed it up and added a border. I had no problem making all those little blocks and it hardly made a dent in my string bucket. I struggled with the quilting but after ripping the stitches out three times I wasn’t changing it again. When I took a short break I thought maybe when I got back to it I’d be luckier – and then this thought came through my head – it isn’t luck, it’s skill.

February Postcard

Quilting

February 9, 2021

I was quilting (virtually) with Stacia and Deloise today, working on our February miniature. I was up early and felt just a little bit guilty for starting at 5:30. When we did our initial check-in at eight, Deloise and I both had one block done and Stacia was wondering where she had stashed the bag with her project.

We checked in again at eleven and both Stacia and Deloise were finished their tops. I was still working on my blocks. Our final check-in was at two (my time) and they were both done; I was getting ready to sandwich my project.

Since then I have finished my miniature and tried out a couple of new techniques to boot. Stacia mentioned how she does a triangular hanging sleeve so I gave that a try – works very slick and so much easier than the traditional sleeve.

In the past I have tried to machine stitch the binding on both sides of a quilt but had no luck at all. Today when I was attaching my binding I sewed it to the wrong side so I either had to figure out the machine stitching or rip out all the binding. I chose to suck-it-up and the machine stitching worked just fine. I won’t do it all the time but it is nice to know when I mess up (and I know I will again) that there is a solution.

January – Done and Hung

Quilting

Monday, January 18, 2021

For Christmas I gave Stacia and Deloise a little package of “postcards” – one for each month of the year. Each of the postcards was actually instructions for a miniature quilt. During out virtual retreat this past week we all made the January quilt. Although Stacia and Deloise finished theirs much earlier, I committed to finishing mine today.

I quilted the centre and corners of the project with my quilting rulers. I’m only on the first lesson for the first ruler but I was happy to be able to put it to use on something larger than a card.

Even after the limited quilting in the borders was done there was still a lot to do. I trimmed the edges and prepared the binding. Since I planned to hang the piece on the stairway up to my sewing room I added a sleeve. Finally I added a label.

After lunch I sat and stitched down the binding just so I could have it ready for today’s post.

One more homemade gift

Quilting

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

After seeing some of the 12 Days photos Christy has sent me I’m not sure why I thought she might need some more placemats. But placemats are what she got, and at least they aren’t Christmas. I made these during an online stitching session with Stacia and Deloise.