Saturday, January 14, 2017

It took most of the morning to get the binding cut, pieced and attached to the quilt.  Why does it always take longer than you expect? I understand why some of the Guild members get their bindings cut and pieced along with their blocks. I’m seldom sure what size the quilt is going to end up so that doesn’t work for me. I’ll start hand stitching the binding in the evenings, but probably not tonight. I have a knitted toque almost finished and I’d like to get that off the needles first.

I heard that one of the quilt shops in Comox was offering classes for the free-motion templates. I called yesterday but they are specific classes for the Bernini. I could go and I might learn something that I could transfer to my Janome but I decided not to bother. Craftsy was having a buy-one-get-one sale this weekend so I purchased two ruler quilting classes for less than half the cost of taking the ferry across to the Island. They don’t use the same brand of templates, but I know these will help me.

After the binding was attached I headed off to Cranberry Hall. In order to get the insurance quote I needed to take some measurements and get some photos of both the interior and the exterior. I was half-way there when I realized I hadn’t picked up the tape measure. I did my measurements using a foot length; I’ll have to measure the length of my shoe and then calculate the approximate length and width. They would also like to know the height of the building but all they are going to get is that it is one storey; I didn’t have anything long enough to get even an approximate measure.

I spent the afternoon working on some cross stitching. The piece I’m working on was started a long time ago with Dad in mind. If I get it finished before the quilt show I’ll offer it for sale; if not, I have someone in mind that I can give it to.

Friday, January 13, 2017

I didn’t think it would take long to finish the ruler quilting today, and I was right. The Cranberry Hall’s President was coming over at eleven for a quick meeting about the insurance for the Hall. I was almost finished by the time he got here, and had all the ruler work done by lunch.

The afternoon didn’t go as quickly. First, I had to deal with the back of the quilt. Using the scissor option on my machine leaves about a half inch length of thread on the back and each one of them had to be snipped off. Then I had to deal with the clumps of thread that got caught in the quilting. I managed to clear them up enough that I’m not ashamed of my work and, if necessary, I’ll cover the worst of them with a felt marker (around the Guild they suggest we should use a gel pen). Even when all that was done I felt like the quilt was still lacking something.

I used a scallop-looking stitch along both sides of the sashing and all the way around the outer edge. It was just good luck that the start and the finish of the scallop on the edge more or less joined up! There is quite an investment in thread on this quilt.

Tomorrow I will trim the quilt, cut the binding and attach it to the quilt. I’m not sure if I’ll sit and hand stitch the binding right away – I feel like the quilt and I need a break!

Thursday, January 12, 2017

I think I only have one more day of quilting left but Thursday has always been my day for paperwork so that’s where I started. This week I decided, as I climbed over and around boxes and bins, that whatever time was left in the day after paperwork on Thursdays would be dedicated to cleaning up and some of my paper projects.

With that in mind I had a few photos for scanning set aside on my desktop. In addition, I also had a pile of recipes sitting on my desktop that needed to be added to my recipe program. Yesterday, when the keyboard tray of my desk fell apart, all of these moved to my In Basket. For the moment I’ve cleared my desktop and have both my keyboard and mouse sitting on it. There isn’t room for much else so perhaps this will prevent me from stacking it up again.

Anyway, back to paperwork. It was almost noon before my physical In Basket had been cleared and Pat’s accounting had been done. After lunch I worked on my e-mail, Cranberry Hall and Guild business.

There is very little time left in my afternoon, but I’m going to get busy at some of the piles I have scattered around the room.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

I’m back at my ruler quilting; I hoped to be finished today but I don’t think that is going to happen. I am making progress though and I’m getting a bit quicker. There are still a few things I’m not happy with – actually more than a few – and I may ask the advice of my Guild members as to whether or not the project is suitable even as a donation quilt.

Without getting into too much technical jargon (and I wouldn’t even know the technical terms to use) I have changed my method today. I was having trouble with the back stitching at the beginning of a run because the bobbin thread was bunching up on the back. So today I went back to one of the first things I learned about free-motion quilting and that was to pull the bobbin thread to the top before starting. That worked well but the scissors leave a particularly short bit of bobbin thread for the next start and I was constantly having to remove my gloves in order to grab the small bit and pull the thread longer.

After a few glove-off glove-on moments I decided I didn’t need the hand that holds the ruler to be gloved. So I keep the glove on my right hand (to pull the fabric) and that leaves my gloveless left hand to pull the bobbin thread to the top; the ruler stays in place equally as well with or without the glove.

I’ll get back to in now and see how far I can get before the day runs out.