APQ 2016 May UFO

The UFO for May was a table runner I had started for my daughter.  She loves these colors!  Her home had rooms painted in these colors.  Going there was like walking into sunshine.  She has since moved from that home but I think when she sees this, it will get used in her new home.  

This is the state of the runner when I moved on to other things.  i don't know why I left it but it was probably because she moved.  When I started checking through my UFOs to see which 12 would go on my list, I was glad to see this one and it went immediately on the list.  The top was finished and the backing was constructed.  I needed to create the binding and then sandwich the pieces and get it quilted and bound.  I am glad it is now finally finished and I will be so happy to present it to her - in her new home!  

So, the Hubs and I had a quiet week planned at our mountain house and I thought it would be a perfect place to work on this project while he was fishing in our lake.  I was up against my May deadline so this would give me uninterupted quilting time.  I packed the pieces, my Bernina with all her feet and attachments, my bag of supplies like scissors, thread, sewing needles, rulers, a seam ripper and my brass stiletto.  I have cutting mats, an iron and ironing board already there.  I was all set - until I went to put everything together and discovered that I could not make a quilt sandwich without any filling - the batting!  Yikes!

The closest quilt shop had recently closed down and the only other one I could think of was a good distance away.  But, there was a Walmart in a near-by town that was about 40 minutes away.  We were on our way to go grocery shopping anyway so I asked the Hubs if we could add a trip to Walmart to our day's travels.  Of course he agreed when he understood my dilemma.  I had no idea if this Walmart even had a fabric department but I kept my fingers crossed the whole way there.  

Well, success!  They carried a nice selection of fabrics as well as everything sewing related - including batting!  

I had a wonderful view from our cabin while sewing, don't you think?

Here are pictures of the finished runner.  I love the backing fabric but I had a special love of dragonflies!  The runner finished at 16" x 46".  A nice size for my daughter's table or breakfast bar.  I wish I could remember the pattern name though, thinking it was an Atkinson design, but not sure.  Hopefully it will come to me and I can give credit where credit is due.  

The project for June is going to be a real challenge to get finished in what is now 25 days.  It is from a class I took on Nickel Quilts, using the book of the same name by Pat Speth and Charlene Thode. The intro to the quilt to be made in class said "It's really fun to make two quilts at the same time, and it's easy when you make combination units because the process also yields enough for the blocks in a second quilt".  We will see how "fun and easy" this turns out to be.  This is what it looks like now.  

Stay tuned and watch for the results.  This should be good........

Quilt as desired

We have a new baby boy in the family, well he was born last September, and his Dad is a big baseball fan.  So, naturally many gifts, as well as his room, have been baseball related.  Therefore, it follows that I would make him a baseball related quilt.  

The search for the appropriate fabric began.  I wanted something different, not just the standard baseball fabric.  It took a while but I found, what I thought were the perfect choices.  

I used a pattern from the Quiltmaker website called Super Nine Patch with two solids and a pattern for the center which actually ended up being a baseball pattern.  The other solids were a tan and green to represent a baseball field. The top went together very nicely.  You can find the free pattern at http://www.quiltmaker.com/patterns/details.html?idx=184.  

The fabric from the backing was found at a quilt shop in Effort, PA, a town near our cabin in the Poconos.  I loved the vintage vibe it had for the game of baseball.  It also had colors in it that complemented the colors in the front fabrics.  The quilt came together very easily - until the quilting process!  I wanted to machine quilt this simple quilt but was in a quandary as too how!  I get the same feeling when I see very detailed instructions in quilt patterns but then the last sentence is "quilt as desired".  What does that mean?  

I thought I would try a straight line pattern.  I was not very comfortable with free motion quilting and was still gaining confidence to even do my own quilting.  It was my intention to work at that over this year.  My plan was to use tape to mark off a pattern and keep it linear and simple.  I pin basted the top to the backing and added the tape.  Then I got busy quilting.  I wasn't sure if I liked what was happening from the git-go but I kept on thinking it would get better.  It didn't.  i just became more frustrated.  

I took it off the machine and removed some of the tape.  Yuk was the only word that came to mind.  I could not give this as a gift with this stitching.  I put it away and took a break.  I didn't even take pictures - it was that bad!  

I left it for a while, but then I saw that my LQS was giving a machine quilting class over two saturdays.  This was just what I needed and the timing could not be better.  I signed up for the class and counted down the days.  

I learned a lot during that class.  I used my new-ish Bernina since I bought it at this LQS.  I learned how to properly use a walking foot, which threads to use for quilting and bobbins, how to adjust the tension for different types of sewing and which needles worked best.  I finished the class with a new sense of control and increased confidence.  I finally felt I could do this.  But first I needed to spend a few hours unstitching the stitching I had previously done!  No place to do this better than in a cabin in the woods!  With a glass of wine - or two!  

When the stitching was all removed I deconstructed the sandwich and pressed the top and backing.  I decided to spray baste the sandwich this time instead of pinning.  I thought it was a good size project to try this method and I wanted to get away from pins and sore knees.  The basting went well and I was pleased with how it worked with the needle.  

With baseball, there is a diamond, so I decided to stitch a diamond into the center of the quilt.  The borders were stitched in a linear pattern that crossed at the corners.  I used my walking foot with the stitching guides.  This worked very well.  The last thing to do was bind it.  Done, done, done!  It was given to the new little guy and his parents in May.  They loved it, and he loved it!  I like the way you can use either side of the quilt as well!  

The pictures show the quilting on the front and how it appears in the corners.  I love how cross hatching works.  The center picture shows the backing fabric.

 

  

 

 I think he likes it too!  

Lots of lessons learned with this small quilt!