Vacation is over

I have a confession to make, I haven't been sewing much in the past 2-3 weeks, hence no new blog posting.  It has been very hot here in California and my sewing room doesn't have an air conditioner.  I would rather go somewhere else like Farmer Markets, the beach, antique stores, or rather do something else like swimming...etc.   Plus my husband was done with his contract and had some time off, so we took quite a few day trips.

Now that the summer vacation is over and I feel fresh and recharged, I got right back to work.  It's still hot during the day, but I think my machine is missing me.  The first UFO I tackled was a double wedding ring quilt that my friend started.   She pieced the top and got it ready for hand quilting but had a stroke before she could do it.   My other friend, in the picture, and I finished the hand quilting for her.  It took us 4 months.  She was touched when I showed her the quilt.  Even though she couldn't talk, I knew she was happy.   Sorry to tell you that last March, the owner of the quilt passed away unexpectedly.   I just finished binding it last night and will give it back to her daughter.  Because the quilt is quite large, I decided to try machine binding after seeing a tutorial called Susie magic binding. 

Next, I'm working on the Fabri-Quilt New Block Blog Hop 2015.  I'll post about it next week.  So excited.  

Now let's go sew something!

My first mini quilt!

Last Saturday, I was browsing on Pinterest and saw a really cute mini quilt from samelia'smum.com and decided that I would make one.  I didn't use the tutorial, but you can go to the tutorial here.

From the picture, I started free hand drawing the design on a pattern paper and cut out a few bird shapes from scrap that I have.  I've done some free motion quilting before, but it's been a long time, 5 years to be precise.  Wow, that's a long time since my daughter's college quilt!  I'm really out of shape on this one, but I thought I'd give it a try.  I need practice, right?

I have some white linen fabric left over from my skirt, so I used that for the quilt top.  I guess I'll find out how this linen fabric will look as a quilt top, I told myself while I cut it into 18 inch-square.  With Wonder Under, I fussed the bird shapes on the top.  I layered the back, batting and the top, pin basted them and I was ready to give it a try.  Before I started on the real quilt, I took some muslin, scrap batting and practice the free motion for awhile.  I was all over the place.  Then I was ready to start on the mini quilt.

I sew around the edge of the bird bodies twice, 4 times on the tails.  I sew 3 times on the wire, and 4 times on each letters.  At first I didn't plan to do any quilting, so I squared up the quilt and sew binding on it.  Here is the picture.

I didn't like the way it looked.  The linen looks puffy even though I pin basted all three layers really well.  I threw it in the washer, hoping that it will look different when it came out.  It looked worse.  Not only that it's still puffy, the linen top was all wrinkled.  So I did some free motion quilting in the background area.  The quilting is supposed to be loops all over.  Here is the picture.  Do you think it looks better, or worse?

Over all I had fun making this project, and I learned a few things from it.

1. Never use linen which is not intended for quilting.
2. Learn to use my new digital camera, or go take a class, so I'll take better picture. 
3. Practice, practice and more practice free motion quilting.

Have a blessed week, everyone!