Colorblock quilt progress

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

I forgot to post this sooner, sorry. With the Colorblock quilt, I had a hard time deciding what to quilt. I defaulted to what the pattern samples show and what most people did, at least according to all the pics I found.

Straight lines.

Straight line quilting

It’s boring but it works. Up and down on the tall strip and back and forth on the horizontal blocks.

Funnily enough, when I did mark these, the width of my chalk was just enough to make the lines slightly over 1″ apart and a little off by the time I get to the other side of the block. But the recipient won’t care. 😉

And yes I did mark these and not use a guide or eyeball it.

Sunday Stash: out of control edition

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Andrea R — Leave a comment

This weekend I moved my sewing room to a spare beedroom in the basement. It was at the end of one of the L in the main room of the basement, but for various reason, we decided to move it to the back bedroom.

Ta da!

It’s much more efficient use of the space, a great work area, and even better – we moved my desk in from storage. That desk is big, heavy and most importantly does not bounce when I sew fast.

For the stash part, I give you this:

Yeah. That’s all fabric.

And this is not all my fabric.

*gulp*

A new way to baste quilts

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Andrea R — 2 Comments

Over the weekend – actually, on Friday, my usual day off – I set about basting as many quilts as I had ready to go that also had batting available. In one of the Craftsy classes I signed up for the awesome Leah Day showed us how to baste quilts on a table and use elastics at the corner to secure the fabric and pull it taut.

Well I tried this and it worked so well I am in love with it! Of course I modified it slighty for my table and the quilts I was basting, but LOOK at the stack of quilts I got basted!

I even ran out of safety pins. And when I started I realized my mom had my Quick Klip tool, but I managed.

Even though my table is a nice sturdy wood table, I didn’t worry about scratching it with pins as it is already dinged and painted and stained and watermarked and just generally lived on.

I can also report that my back did not feel like I was eighty years old when I was done either. I did two baby quilts, two Christmas panels and a Christmas runner for my mom AND I did the markings on another larger quilt. I also watched three episodes of season three of Dr Who. So I accomplished quite a bit.

This quilt I am quilting a large Mariner’s Compass / Compass Rose on it. Can’t wait to see how it turns out, as long as I keep my eye on the right lines.

p.s – am I the only one who never has enough batting? Or the piece I have leftover is never quite big enough for the tops I have that need batting?