Archive for May, 2007

Maybe the last post sounded a little whiny but I don’t worry too much about the tops waiting for quilting. I don’t quilt as a *job* so I rarely have set deadlines and usually make good progress.

Today I quilted my Aunt’s top – you remember – the one one I lost my mind and spent hours pulling out the quilting stitches before going to visit my Mom. Anyway, she’s pretty *relaxed* about how she adds borders to quilts so they’re usually a challenge. After picking out all that stitching and reloading the quilt – I remembered why I had changed my mind about a pantograph in the beginning. There was way too much fullness in the entire quilt to manage from the back and the borders were going to be particularly difficult. In the end, I just quilted a loopy meander and the leaves I started with would probably have looked better.

My solution was to quilt pleats in the borders since there was no way to quilt them without getting lots of tucks. Because I’m such a nice niece I even slip stitched them down after finishing the quilting.

Before someone asks why I don’t tell her the *right* way to measure and add borders – she already knows how but just chooses not to.

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I have about 25 tops in line for quilting right now and that number keeps growing. In addition to tops from my Mom and aunts, I’ve added these 3 to the pile.

Two of these are the ones Mom and I finished this past week (they’ll go to her church at Christmas) and the Roman Stripes is a top that Mom made and gave me to finish for HeartStrings and donate. The green double 4 patch is a UFO from last year and I’m happy to have that top finished and ready for quilting.

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I had several comments about the wallhanging in the last photo. The picture was taken at Mom’s house and that’s a pattern I adapted for her out of a book or magazine. The center is unchanged from the pattern and we put a braid border around it to go with an applique quilt she uses on that bed.

If someone *needs* to know where the pattern came from – let me know and I’ll chase it down.

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Mom and I have worked long and hard the last couple days and have made great progress on our May stash quilts. We both still have borders to add but these will be ready to go back with me for quilting when I go home on Saturday.

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Thanks for all the encouraging comments – I’m going to visit Mom for a week so maybe when I get back I can finish my Spiderweb top and quilt the top for my Aunt. I’m usually very tolerant of my work so I’m not sure why I’ve been displeased lately but taking a break will help.

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If my dissatisfaction with the progress on the spiderweb quilt wasn’t enough – I loaded a rail fence quilt for my Aunt on the longarm this morning. Started quilting it and decided I wasn’t happy with it either.

I’ve spent all afternoon picking out quilting stitches and still have at least 2-3 hours left before I’m done. This is obviously a week I shouldn’t be quilting!

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