Weekend Update

This was a very productive weekend!

Besides getting caught up on making sweet pickle relish and dill pickles for the first time ever, I made enough blocks yesterday to make 2 new Bronco quilt tops!

I still have to sew the rows together and audition the border fabric, but I’m considering simply adding outer borders, and not using inner borders on this one.

Since I’ve got two quilts, I’m also considering using a fleece back for one and a cotton back for the other.

School is starts today…or, rather, it’s supposed to.  I am signed up for an online class, but the class hasn’t been published to my account yet.  Last semester the professor wouldn’t even give me the list of the books we were supposed to use ahead of time so I could get them ordered beforehand.  I’ll have to see if I stay signed up for this class!

More Bronco quilts to come!

Wedding Quilt – complete!

The binding is done and the quilt is ready to be shipped out!  I think the red binding adds a nice touch.

The back is a red flannel; it was supposed to be maroon, but it’s more like a candy apple red.  If you stare at it too long and then look away, everything looks like it’s in shades of green!

Thursday is the first quilt guild meeting of the season, show it off there, then it will go into the mail.

So, with all this focus on the wedding quilt, I haven’t completed my SwirlAbout quilt.  That’s the one I posted about on July 12th, and I was all excited about the new border fabric I bought for it.  I still am, it’s just that  I was getting some really bad waves and wrinkles in the black inner border, so I thought I’d save myself a bunch of grief and take it off and see what I could do to fix it; it certainly wasn’t going to get any better by adding another border!

The problem now is that I had intended to get that quilt entered into the Portland quilt show, but I think I missed the entry deadline already, so even if I busted my rump to get it done, it’s probably too late.  I’ll have to check, but I have a lot on my plate coming up.

So far I’ve finished 2 of the helmet liners, but they are still taking donations until September 1st.

It’s also canning season, and my DH and I made plum jam tonight; it’s the first time we’ve done any canning together!  It turned out really good, too, and we have enough plums to make another batch tomorrow night.  This weekend I’ll need to work on making some pickle relish and maybe getting some pickles canned, too.

School starts on August 23rd, and even though I’m only taking one class, Innovations is coming up and I have another trip in the works. 

Then there are the everyday, and not so everyday, chores that I have put off which are demanding my urgent attention.

I think I need to clone me!

Wedding Quilt – Binding Needed

I’ve finished quilting the Wedding Quilt and have the binding made.  Last night I went to my longarm networking meeting and was able to whip stitch down the tucks in the back; they aren’t very visible and at lease they lay down now.   Tonight I will start attaching the binding and will machine stitch it down.

The Mother of the Bride said this about the preview photos I sent her:

“The quilt is gorgeous....I feel better already… The product itself is so amazing, the extra line on the back side [from machine stitching the binding on the front] is certainly not an issue.  I am a bit envious of them having such a quality heirloom quilt, but also proud to have been a part of it.  I love what you did to the border -- such an artist you are.”

Since she put together the blocks made by the family, she knew that they were not consistently made, or the same size, so she had her doubts.  Quilting certainly makes all the difference in the world to an unfinished top.

I’ll post photos when I finish it completely, as I think the red binding will add another dimension.

Wedding Quilt - update

I thought I’d post an update to the saga of my latest quilt project, the wedding quilt.

I started it this weekend and even took Monday off to see if I could get it finished.  It's for a family friend, and the wedding is at the end of September and I have a million other things I need to do....they drove it here from Washington state, and the mom didn't have enough time to complete it so I ended up putting the borders on it.  I used the straight of grain for the outer border, just like Brenda Hennings from Bear Paw Productions suggests.  I was determined I was going to get it done Sunday night, as I was going into the 10th hour, and got to the last row and the border was puckering, big time.

So, I decided I couldn't really “quilt it out”, and with it being a wedding quilt, as well as the gal's first quilt and all...so I ripped out the thread holding most of the border and I literally ended up with an extra 2 inches!!  Now I have to take it off the frame and fix it, then finish that last row.  I'm going to wait until the weekend to finish it, well, maybe I’ll get to the border on Thursday, but I have been ignoring a TON of stuff that needs doing around the house.  Sigh, where does the time go??

I've been trying to help DH figure out a billing problem with his business, and now I’ve gotten all riled up.  He finally decided that he should take the problem back before I blew a gasket.  I probably didn't help him any, and I didn't accomplish anything toight that I wanted to, either.  Drat!

Better get ready for bed...well, maybe a row or 2 of knitting on my hat will calm me down first.

Wedding Quilt

I'm not sure if I’ve mentioned in the past that I volunteered to quilt a wedding quilt for my husband's best friend’s oldest daughters wedding…. did I?

So here's the story:  The youngest daughter, DD2, approached me to find out information about making a quilt for her sister's (DD1) upcoming wedding at the end of September.  Since I was going to make my own quilt, I thought that it would work well to simply quilt her quilt as our wedding gift.

The catch is that DD2 has never made a quilt before, and she wanted to make a King sized quilt!  I am never one to discourage such ambition, especially since I did the very same thing.  We discussed patterns and she eventually picked one called True Lover’s Knot, which is much like a Log Cabin.  Since many people start on those as first patterns I told her that would be just fine.  Personally, I think sewing the narrow strips is much more difficult than the larger strips.

I told DD2 that she needed to get me the quilt before the end of July because I would be starting school in the middle of August, as well as to account for any possible delays.  With the help of her mom, she did just that, arriving this weekend from out-of-state with her dad and the quilt in tow.  Her mom however had run out of time to attach the borders and asked me if I could do that as well.  I agreed, as long as she sent me the border fabric washed and ready to go.

There were a couple of problems, however.  First, the border fabric was not the same solid color that was used in the top, and it did not enhance the top in any way.  Secondly, several of the seams needed to be picked out and re-sewn.  So, Friday afternoon off we went to Quilt Expressions, where Karen H. helped DD2 pick new border fabric and came up with a unique solution for the inner border.  We got it into the wash, inspected the quilt for areas that needed to be fixed, started fixing them, and then ironed the new fabric on Saturday.

We had decided to go floating the Boise River Saturday afternoon and we did just that.  No need to have me stay home and quilt while everyone else is off having fun in the sun, right?  I ended up with a pretty intense sunburn on my legs, from my thighs to my ankles!  We also had planned a barbecue for that evening and we had a great time with mutual friends who had recently moved to Boise as well.  We had tons of food and I ate way too much!

Dad and DD2 left early Sunday morning, as she needed to get back to work by Monday.

I spent all of yesterday afternoon fixing additional seams that I found that needed to be re-sewn, and in the evening eventually got the borders added to the quilt.

Today, I will finish getting the quilt loaded and start the quilting.  Optimistically, given the quilting pattern we selected, the quilting should only take about three hours if each row could be accomplished in 15 minutes.   However, I am not fast nor am I optimistic, and it will probably end up taking me the entire day.

So, I better get started!

Sewing Morning

I have really gotten into working on the knitted helmet liner caps, so have sort of taken a break from working on my quilts…gasp!

I completed one on Friday and started casting on stitches for the next one.     Last night I got the ribbing done and have started the main body.  I had intended to sew this morning, as we had company coming in the afternoon, but I decided that I should work on cleaning up some of the mini piles that have popped up instead.  I’m glad I did, but it sure wore me out!  I had to lay down and take a nap!  We haven’t seen them in several years, and it was sure a nice visit.  I did, however, completely fall off the diet wagon, and I am going to pay the piper in the morning!

As for my current quilting project, I need to “tighten up” some of the half square triangles on the quilt top I am currently working on, that I haven’t named yet, that I took the borders off of early last week.  That way I can put the black inner border back on, and I need to cut the replacement border fabric so I can finish it up.  I’d like to enter this one in the quilt show in Oregon in September.  As a featured guild, the Boise Basin Quilters can enter quilts for no fee, and I plan to take advantage of that!

Border Fabric - Update

I have decided to go with the new fabric for the borders, and make the black border skinnier.  So, the new inner border fabric is not getting used in this project.  My mom said it looked sort of brown and blah from a distance, and I have to say I agree with her.

So, last night I removed the borders, then cut the black inner border down 1/2”.  I then admitted that there is too much fabric in that border, it would not lay flat for anything and as I was trying to starch and press it out, it simply wrinkled on me.  That’s exactly what it would do if I tried to quilt it this way, so I decided to take them off too, and see what I can do about easing them back on and make them flat.  I think the fullness is coming from the bias edges of the half square triangles….bleh!

Now I’m back down to where I started on Saturday!  Will get the outer borders cut Thursday night and see how I can take in the fullness too, so I can get it finished this weekend.  We have company coming on Sunday, and I’m getting my hair done in the morning on Saturday.  With all of those distractions I’ll be lucky if I get anything else done!  DH invited me to go on a date tonight, so will be spending some quality time with him.  He’s such a sweetheart!