Thursday, August 31, 2023

August OMG finished

 For the month of August, I wanted to finish the baby quilt top and I did.  It's now ready for quilting.

 

Go to the Elmstreet quilt for the finish linkup here.

Have a great week.

Margo

Monday, August 28, 2023

WIP And LongArm Quilting on 'Scattered'

The work on the baby quilt continues.  I talked to the baby's mother  and she didn't like the juvenile prints or orange colors so off they went.  I think I have the final layout.  I'll leave them on my design wall for a few days.  The background will be a combination of beige fabrics.  

 

 

I've tried to capture the movement of marbles.  I hope I succeeded.  I loved playing with marbles when I was young, now I just collect them in a glass jar.  I enjoy looking at their beautiful colors.  Even though I don't have sage colored marbles in my collection, I like these color combinations on the quilt.

 

I did the longarm quilting on the 'Scattered' quilt.  Days before I actually quilted it, I looked at my collection of books on machine quilting by Angela Walters and others for ideas.  I also looked at some edge to edge quilting pictures online such as Wildflower and others, hoping that I would find something I liked.  When I saw this one and I said to myself, 'that's it'.  It looked easy enough, I thought.

 

 
I practiced tracing with fingers and over-confidently thought that I got it.  When the day came, I showed up to find that Patti, a volunteer at the Q4C, had already set a practice piece for me.  Isn't she great?  Without her I would never have done it.  I tried to do the loops and swirls according to the picture I had in mind.  I couldn't guide the machine to do what I wanted.  It was NOT as easy as it looked.  It came out looking awful, didn't look anything like in the picture.  Patti recommended that I do the simple loops and leaves design.  She brought me back down to reality and I really appreciated that.  I realized that I took a bite bigger than I could chew.  I practiced for a while, and off I went on to the actual quilting.  Patti helped me to load the quilt on, and two hours later, I finished it.  The leaves look more like hearts but it doesn't matter, I like that.  Here are some pictures. 

 


Detail picture

I know I have so much more to learn and the most important thing is to practice more.  I really enjoyed the longarm quilting.  I especially like the part that I don't have to manually baste the quilt which saved me a lot of time and also saved my back!  Even though this is my first longarm experience on a big quilt, I finished it in less than three hours time.  I really like that!!   Now I just have to make more tops so that I can do more longarm quilting.  Problem solved!!


What are you working on this week?  I would love to hear about your longarm quilting experiences, so please share in the comment below.  Thank you!!


Have a great week.

Margo


In addition to the linky parties on the sidebar, I also link up to:
 

Link to To Do Tuesday  hosted by Carol at Quilt Schmilt  

Brag About Your Beauties at From Bolt to Beauty

Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More 

Put Your Foot Down at For the Love of Geese

 

 

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

LongArm Quilting

 

This quilt top is made from a pattern called Scattered designed by Allison from Cluck Cluck Sew for the book Modern Quilts from the Blogging Universe published in 2012. 

I made this top in 2013 when I was teaching at a local quilt shop.  The quilt top is 60" x 72".  It has been in my closet since then.  Now I'm going to quilt this top and give it to a friend.  I already reserved a longarm machine time with the Quilting for Community this Thursday.  I'm excited to try the longarm again.  I haven't done any longarm quilting since the time I took the class in February and you can read about it here.  Wish me luck!!

Have a great week and thanks for visiting.

Margo



In addition to the linky parties on the sidebar, I also link up to:
 

Link to To Do Tuesday  hosted by Carol at Quilt Schmilt  

Brag About Your Beauties at From Bolt to Beauty

Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More 

Put Your Foot Down at For the Love of Geese

Thursday, August 3, 2023

Staycation And A New Project

 Hi there everyone,


It's been so hot here in Southern California.  We decided to do a staycation and take it easy for a few weeks.  Everyday, I would go into my vegetable garden real early in the morning and take care of my plants so that they will survive the heat.  It's the happiest time of the day for me.  I didn't sew much but did some reading and tried my best to get off my feet.  I was diagnosed with Mortons Neuroma on my right foot last month.   By the end of the day, my right foot would be in so much pain that I could hardly stand up.  Right now the doctor hasn't yet prescribed the injection and I hope he never will.  At the end of the day, I just soak my feet in a warm epsom salt solution.  It seems to help a lot.  Fingers crossed.....


I started the quilting on my denim quilt, but put it on hold right now.  There is a new, more urgent baby quilt that I have to make for a dear friend who is having a new grandson.  This will be the third baby boy quilt for this year.  The color theme is sage green.  I pulled out some fabric, bought some new pieces and started to make some blocks.  I randomly put them on the design wall as shown here.   I want to finish the top by the end of August.

 


In our Valley MQG monthly meeting last month, we had a chance to enjoy a trunk show from Linda and Carl Sullivan of Colourwerx.  I really like their ModDog pattern which I won as a door prize from Linda as seen here.  I think this pattern will be really cute for a baby quilt.

 

Thanks all for visiting and have a great week.

Margo

 

 

In addition to the linky parties on the sidebar, I also link up to:
 

Link to To Do Tuesday  hosted by Carol at Quilt Schmilt  

Brag About Your Beauties at From Bolt to Beauty

Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More 

Put Your Foot Down at For the Love of Geese