Catching up

Hello Everyone!

I don’t know about you guys, but I have been swamped since I came back from Innovations.

I finally got my Innova frame together and the leaders on the poles. I taped them down and have been pinning backs to the leaders and floating the tops; I’ve always pinned the bottom of the quilt top down, after sewing the top to the batting.  I have completed 2 charity baby quilts and learned a lot.

I did free motion on the first one, using some of the techniques I learned at Innovations, especially the Hooked on Feathers technique from Sally Terry.  From the back, it doesn’t look too bad, not great, but not too bad. It is made up of 14” pinwheel star blocks, with the middle block being a 14” print which doesn’t match any of the other colors at all (red, yellow black print on white background).

I used a connecting curve from corner to corner on the blocks, which I’ve never done before, and I wobbled a lot. I used a light pink for the quilting, and if I would have been thinking of it, and if I would have had red on hand, I would have used that for the large Hooked on Feathers design in the middle, so it would have actually shown up on the front.  You can see the photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/cjloves2quilt and it is the First Charity Quilt album.

I figured out that I do not like pinning and want to switch out to a Velcro system.  Someone in one of the Yahoo groups mentioned attaching the leaders to the poles using industrial Velcro straight to the pole, and I can see where that would work out REALLY well! The leaders aren’t as straight as I would like, and the back one could be longer, too, so I might just make a set of them up myself…or not! That’s part of what got me into the pinning anyway, is that I couldn’t decide what to do, or how long to make anything and I was anxious to get going. Besides, I have to order that stuff and it will take some time to get it, then make it, and I want to quilt in the meantime.

It has been getting colder and rainy here, which is perfect quilting weather.  I hope you are all making progress on lots of projects!

Take care!
Connie