Quilted Jonquil

I’ve gotten around two corners and am half way done with the hand stitching on this quilt, woo hoo!  It’s looking nice with the binding

click to enlarge

Spring arrived in the form of a box on my doorstep Friday afternoon   It was my Yo-Yo Sisterhood of the Traveling Panties package!!!!  Aren’t they great?  Just too much fun watching the reactions when I tell folks what I did

The box arrived just in time for too……we had 4 inches of snow Saturday night!!  The snow was completely gone by Sunday afternoon and the daffodils seemed to have survived.

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I got the binding machine sewed on the first Mountain quilt this weekend and have gotten about a third of it sewed down by hand.   There will be no sewing room activity this coming weekend as I’ll be gone.  That means I’ll miss the First Saturday blocks so I’ll have to arrange to get April’s blocks later.

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I finished one of the Dinosaur tops.  As you can see it’s a quickie with hardly any thinking needed but I think it turned out pretty cute.

I was cleaning out some folders on my computer and saw this picture of an antique quilt that was on eBay awhile back.

Isn’t it cool?  I thought I’d post it on my blog and low and behold, this is my 100th post.  Doesn’t seem like I’ve been blogging for long but my first post is dated July 28, 2007.

I’ve been making leader/ender 9 patches for a while…..here’s a pile.

I read about fanning or twirling the seams on a couple of blogs.  Doing this helps your blocks lay flat but I haven’t given it too much thought.  Judy Laquidara from Patchwork Times has a good post about it here and since these are small blocks, 3 inches finished, the lumps at the intersection of the seams does make them un-flat so I thought I’d try it.  Last night while watching the Biggest Loser I picked the threads and this morning I gave a couple of these blocks a press.  Look at this:

Don’t they look nice and neat?  They certainly lay much nicer now.  I’m thinking I need to do this to all the 4 patches I’ve made…..nothing like a block that’s nice and flat

Every once in a while I grab a couple of fabrics from my scrap salad bag and sew them together as a leader/ender when I don’t have nine patch pieces all lined up.  I really do like the freedom of the crumb blocks!

It’s kind of like the cloud game where you look at the clouds and try to spot shapes, like a dog or an elephant.  In this one I see a house and a crooked fence

I don’t think I mentioned before about the Yo-Yo Sisterhood of the Traveling Panties with Ami Simms of the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative but check out her post here. Somewhere on the clothes line are 6 pair of my panties!!  Please read her original post about the Traveling Panties here.

Yep, I sent my underware off to be dyed by Ami Simms!!  As Ami says, “if you are uncomfortable with the Traveling Panties, you shouldn’t be sending your panties to a complete stranger!”  Each pair sent was dyed a different color & I sent 6 pair

I’ll be sure to post a picture when my Traveling Panties return…….I’ll know their mine because we had to write our name in the back, just like for summer camp!

First let me say that Cranky is not “all better”, I have simply adjusted my quilting process so I could get the first Mountain quilt finished.   I’m still not happy with Cranky

That said, here is the first Mountain quilt with the quilting all done:

Since I have the binding already together, I hope to get it sewn on this week….then all that’s left is the hand sewing and label, YEA!!!

I was messing around with the free pieced lettering ala Lazy Gal Quilting and am pretty happy with my first attempt

Lastly, I have two more Dino quilts in the works and let me tell you, these colors really cheer you up when Cranky gets you down!

I received my AQS  name badge yesterday.  I’ll do my best to stimulate the economy while at the quilt show…but not tooooo much

I’m being green and re-using a name badge holder from last year so that’s why it looks a little, well, used.

I took pictures of Simontacchi & Casper…..no wait they are quilt related, really.  Casper is in a chair featuring a throw I made many years ago and Simontacchi is laying near one of his favorate toys…..the hem cut off the bottom of a Goodwill shirt to be used for QUILTING.  See?  Both quilting related   Simon loves to drag the cut off hem around and have you play fetch with him.  No kidding, he loves for you to throw it and he’ll bring it back for more.  Lots of these hems end up in my sewing room with Simon pestering to play the fetch game.  Sometimes, he can be a pest.

I’m not speaking to Cranky right now.  Mostly because I had a quilt guild meeting Tuesday night & errands to run last night but also because I’d rather work on her first thing in the morning when I’m bright eyed and bushy tailed.  The daffodils are blooming this week so I took a picture in the dark when I got home last last night.  Officially it’s spring tomorrow but don’t daffodils just say spring?

I picked up a couple of shirts from the Goodwill this weekend….

Not such a good picture but the one on the right is an old gold color which I’ve been on the lookout for because I want to make this quilts:

I’ve had this pattern for so long I’m not even sure where I picked it up from.  I think old shirts will make up into this quilt wonderfully.

I’ve been working on coming up with a name for my long arm quilting machine.  The original owner called her T-Rex.  I don’t think my mom had a name for her, other than “the older or other” machine.  I’ve tried out a couple of different names but nothing really inspired me until this weekend.  Her name is Cranky, it fits her perfectly.  I had such high hopes of getting both mountain quilts quilted this weekend.  I even dreamed of getting the binding sewed on by machine.  Cranky had other ideas.

I got the first quilt  loaded, did a trial run at the stitch on the excess at the edges….the stitches looked good so I started in…..then the thread broke.  I know this pattern well, it means I have to time the machine, AGAIN.   Timing really isn’t that complicated now that I know what to do but it is awkward since you have to determine the needle position by looking under the rails.  I was feeling good though because the first timing job did the trick.  I was off and running.  I got to what I hoped would be my last turn of the take up rail when I realized there was  just a little quilt left on the rail.  See that little bit left on the roller on the right.

Almost done, right?  NOT!!  When I started Cranky up, she jammed immediately and the hand wheel would not turn.  There was a thread caught in the hook assembly, in the race I think is what my dad called it.  I gently pulled and tried to coax the thread out and finally just jerked it loose.  It felt like it broke so there was nothing to do but take the whole thing apart.  It just wouldn’t turn no matter what.   How can it be sewing so nicely and then WHAM?  I was holding the threads when I started so that wasn’t it but perhaps there was a loose thread on the underside.  While contemplating the problem, I decided to go use my Featherweight (which also needs a name by the way) that almost never gives me any trouble.  I finished the two first Sat blocks and made some more 9 patches.  The red Kaffe Fassett print did not photograph well.

After some therapeutic piecing, it was time to work on Cranky.  So I now have experience taking the hook assembly completely apart.  I found quite a lot of black, oily lint built up but strangely no thread.   So all the cracks and surfaces were cleaned and the whole thing back put back together again.  It was getting late.  So I decided to wait ’til morning to do a test run and see if Cranky was happy again.

Evidently Cranky wasn’t put back together well, because she just won’t sew properly.  Grrrrrrrr.  I spent an hour & a half early Sunday morning trying to get the timing set but I think it must be more than that because, in addition to breaking the thread, she’s skipping stitches.  She only skips stitches when moving counter clockwise from about 6 o’clock to 11 o’clock and then she starts sewing again.  Grrrrrrrrr.  I know my Dad’s first question is, “is the needle in right” which it is…..scarf in back and clocked so that the eye is centered.

So there she sits with a temptingly close-to-finished quilting job.  When I feel like talking to Cranky, I will remove the hook assembly, again, check that all the screws are tightened down and then perhaps call my Dad to see what is next on the trouble shooting list.  Grrrrrr.   Now you know why her name is perfect for her

These kinds of posts are like changing the subject when you don’t want to talk about the current subject. Since I don’t have any quilting things to show of my own, I will show pictures of quilts I find interesting

I will have plenty to show after this weekend since my DH is working a regular shift on Saturday and all day on Sunday.  It’s really best that I spend the weekend sewing or else I might be tempted to visit the LQS (local quilt show for my non blogging readers) or spend time on the computer shopping at all the great fabric stores on-line, right?   That said, here is a great blue & white antique quilt in a pattern I haven’t seen before.