WIP in September

The work on  the baby quilt continues.  I found a perfect flannel piece for the back.  It has sage green to match the front and brick red that I love.

 

 

I love to use flannel for baby quilts.  If I can't use all flannel, I will at lease put it on the back.  Flannel makes the quilt so snugly and warm. 

For this quilt, I'm using a bamboo batting from Moda.  A while ago our guild had a Moda rep. as a speaker in one of our meeting.  It was very informative and fun to see new fabric lines that Moda had in store.  She also showed us the new bamboo blend batting.  I had an awful experience with a bamboo batting as I wrote about it here.  I discussed my concerns with her and she offered a sample for me to use.  I was skeptical so I haven't even open the bag all these times until I found it again in the closet.   

 

Upon the first inspection, the batting seems to be smooth and clean with no visible bamboo chips embedded in the fiber.  That was one of my major concerns.  The next concern is bearded through the fabric.  I guess we'll know that when I actually quilt it.  I'm crossing my fingers!!  If the batting come through in the first line of quilting, I'll immediately take out the batting.  Don't want to have go through the nightmare experience like last time.  On the positive side, I like the fact that bamboo is a naturally anti-bacterial, Eco friendly and renewable material.  And this one is also manufactured in the USA.

Next, I basted the quilt and now it's ready for quilting.  So far so good, no batting shed through.

 

 

I'm still thinking about the quilting design.  I'm opting for straight lines, but it'll be a few days before I start the quilting.

What's on your work table this week?  Are you having fun making it?   Hope you're having a great time doing what you love....

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

 

 

 

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

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