sewing

Easy Street


This gorgeous Easy Street came into the shop and I was amazed at how striking it was when the client held it up from across the room. I love color and this just tickled my fancy. It was also HUGE! It stretched my frame to the limit. I think I only had about a four inch window for changing bobbins. Doable but I won’t repeat the experience. I was a big mistake.

Loaded and ready to rock-n-roll with an easy large meander. Never say “easy” when you’re stitching a quilt with this much color. I went cross-eyed many times while sewing this one. And…the back tension didn’t cooperate with me either. I had to do the big bad ugly.

 Yup. Unsew.  A LOT!!!! The entire queen size quilt had to be frogged. Once that was done, then I had to pick off all the broken stitch maggots off of both sides of ALL….THREE…LAYERS!!!!  This quilt was a huge learning experience for me. Size DOES matter.

I don’t think I took pictures of the completed quilt. I was so relieved just to give it back to it’s (happy customer, btw) owner that I forgot to take final shots.

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Autumn Splash

Autumn Surprise

Autumn Splash is made with cotton fabrics from my stash. The batting is high loft poly to give it that squishy, quilty, hugginess (new words!) and ease in laundering. Forgive me for the chalk markings in the pics. It’ll wash right out in the laundry. Next time, I’ll remember to remove it before I take pictures.

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Wonky Puzzle Baby Quilt

 

The beginning! Selection of bright fabrics for the Wonky Puzzle Blocks Baby Quilt.

The beginning! Selection of bright fabrics for the Wonky Puzzle Blocks Baby Quilt.

This is how it starts. You look though the stash and find some of the brightest, boldest fabrics you have. Oh… and wait for them to talk to you and tell you they want to be part of this quilt. Only then will they all play well together. Just kidding! The more bodacious, gaudy,” too bright for neon” fabric you can locate works great in this quilt!

Finally got it all together. I recommend a design wall for placing all the blocks before the sew out. That way you can move them around so the colors don’t blend into one another. The last thing you want to do (IMHO) is put two similar colors next to each other. Bold, bright and contrasting is the way to go.

After putting the top together I had to figure out what kind of border I wanted to put on. It didn’t make sense to me to make an elaborate border since I wanted the eye to fall in the center of the quilt. I ended up using strip sets from some of the major colors to make the border.

 

This is what I ended up with. I definitely need a design wall! At least some place to take a decent picture of quilts before and after they’re completed. Now onto the quilting! I’ll revisit this page and post a picture of the completed quilt soon!