Quilted Jonquil

First off, here’s my design wall……..it’s a Pinwheel Party!!!  With Block B-1 you end up with an extra one that I’ll save for the back of the quilt.

Check out what other quilters have on their design walls at Judy’s Design Wall Monday post.

Next up, our AAQI Priority quilts have been assigned their registration numbers and are listed on the “Quilts Awaiting Assignment” page, woo hoo!!  They are 4957 thru 4968   I’ve sent the quilts out today so the pictures should be added soon.

In between watching Molly and her owlets this weekend (got to see the 4th owlet hatch!) I managed to sew the fourth Pinwheel Party blocks, get the binding machine sewn down on two quilts and load Sophie with my next quilt.

It’s Design Wall Monday again and you can check out Judy’s post to see what others have on their walls.  Here’s my wall.  I completed block two of the Pinwheel Party quilt.

I also did some quilting on Sophie   She’s still a dream girl to work on and we got the second Scrappy Mountain Majasties quilt quilted.  It’s been trimmed and is ready for the binding.

Simontacchi was quite the pest this weekend when he wasn’t spying on the birds in the backyard.

Or napping on the quilt….

Or showing off his belly

Stash Report

• Added:  6     Cumulative Added:  55.5 yds
• Used:  3 (backing for Recycled Cabins)          Cumulative Used:  ~10 yds
• Net Out/(In):   (45.5 yds)

I checked the IBOL website and see the bundle total is currently at 3,436.  Wow!  I sent two and was instrumental in one more   It’s been interesting to see that some folks have sent things for Mr. IBOL, including a customized t-shirt.  Check out the picture at the bottom of the post here.

So my design wall has my completed appliqued Eagle from Linen Closet Quilts and a little bit of that project I can’t show.

I also used my design wall to show the object of my story…..

Over a year and a half ago, I started to make a Scrappy Mountain Majasties from mens shirts and I mentioned the quilt was for someone else.   I made way more blocks than I needed for one quilt and, NO, I didn’t plan it that way.  In fact, I didn’t plan it at all…….just kept cutting squares from all the shirts.  Anyhoo,  I made two quilt tops, pieced together two backs and made binding enough for two quilts.   Along the way, I had my close encounter with the rotary cutter which I blogged about here which is another totally different story related to these quilts.   I finished the first quilt and that’s the last I blogged about this project.

I didn’t get back to the second quilt right away, then when I did, I couldn’t find it.  I COULD NOT FIND IT ANYWHERE.  I remember having it when I showed my co-workers, my friend at dinner and at my quilt guild.  I couldn’t specifically remember bringing it home but it had been a month or more since then.   I couldn’t find it at home.  And I looked in the most likely and most unlikely spots.  Trust me, I looked EVERYWHERE and asked EVERYWHERE I’d been when I last remembered having it.  After several weeks of constant looking and feeling sick to my stomach, I finally told the recipient that I had lost it.  I didn’t blog about that because it was AWFUL, AWFUL.

Fast forward 6 months.  I’m preparing to quilt one of the Dino quilts and go to get batting for it.  There is a stack of three folded pieces of batting by my longarm so I unfold the first one to see if it will work.  Lo and behold, what do I find folded ever so neatly and safely inside????  YES!!  The second mountain quilt top!  I can’t begin to tell you the elation I felt at seeing that quilt top.   It wasn’t lost, just temporarily stashed in a VERY safe and secure place…..yeah, that’s my horrible, awful, bad story with the VERY HAPPY ENDING or it will be just as soon as I get that sucker quilted, bound and off to it’s owner!!!

Mountain Quilt I is on its way!  I originally thought the label would be so cool done in the buttons saved from the shirts in the quilt but alas, it wasn’t coming together well.  I chucked that idea and went with a hand embroidered label and a heart made using the smaller shirt buttons.   It is  MUCH better than the first go round and I did get to incorporate the buttons.

I said I wouldn’t be doing anything in my sewing room this weekend as we were gone this weekend but I did get some sewing done

I finished hand sewing the binding on the first mountain quilt on our road trip to Memphis.  It’s a nice sized quilt and the picture doesn’t do it justice.  The picture was taken as the last of the sunshine was disappearing.

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.

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’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

I had Friday off and spent a some time in my sewing room after getting three packages sealed up and off to the post office.  I spent most of the day Sat & Sun in my sewing room as well so here’s what I accomplished.

Picture of my second hand quilting project:

I finished the first of six blocks in the first in the series of “Geese in the Forest” by Tiddletails, a BOM.  I’m not liking the freezer paper method referenced so I’m going to try another method to see if I get better results. What’s cool about this BOM is it’s inspired by this quilt that was in the Tokyo International Quilt Festival in Japan and I saw the quilt on a blog and liked it BEFORE this BOM came along   Trendy, aren’t I?  Let me know what you think of my color choices.

I cleaned all the Christmas wrapping paper, ribbons, tags and bags off my cutting table.  Basically I took, back my sewing space   So next up was the backings for the mountain quilts.  Before I could work on the backings for the mountain quilts, I needed to decide on which shirts to use for the bindings and cut all I’d need.  Since the fabric was cut, might as well sew it, right?

Scrappy binding for the smaller of the two quilts…..

Binding from just one fabric for the larger of the two quilts.  This quilt doesn’t have borders so I thought the binding should all be the same. 

Now I could cut big pieces for the backings.  Here’s the first one for the larger quilt with the left over quilt blocks.  Don’t mind the pile of stuff on the back right corner, just t-shirts waiting to be cut into “yarn” for a rug:)  The second back is in 4 seams away from being done as well.  The quilting machine is going to get some more use right quick!