Basting Saturday (Take 2)

The other quilt that I worked on Saturday was a “White on White” quilt that I have had for a number of years but simply haven’t gotten around to doing.

The top was given to me by Elsie, who was a member of our guild. She had started hand quilting it, but hadn’t gotten very far along. I took out her hand quilting, thinking that I would use the piece to practice my machine work. ……. This was maybe 5 or 6 years ago

Then I decided that I wanted to add some trapunto to the piece, so spent quite a bit of time getting the extra batting sewed on and ready to quilt.

The piece had a pillow-top that I was not interested in, so I cut it off, practiced my quilting and then tried washing out the blue lines. Well, they did not immediately come out!!!! I contacted the company that made the piece and they told me that it was only guaranteed to come out for about 2 years. She did suggest that I try washing it in Shout and Oxi-Clean, and that seemed to help remove the lines.

The bottom line here is that I have NO idea whether the lines will wash out once I finish the quilting, but have decided that it is a good practice piece regardless.

I had planned to pin-baste this quilt, but decided that I would just use a Basting Spray and get it over with. Who knows if that will further hinder the line’s disappearing act.

I had thought I would use a variegated King Tut thread, but didn’t like the way it looked in the final analysis, so have decided to just use a beige thread and let the texture do the talking….hopefully with no interruptions from the nasty blue lines!!!!

Basting Saturday

Yesterday, I spent the day making backs and basting a couple of quilts that I have in progress.

The first one was the top that I showed a couple of weeks ago…..I am really pleased with how it turned out.

However, the back is probably the ugliest one in all of history. I decided to try Bonnie Hunter’s (http://www.quiltville.com/) idea of cutting scrap fabrics into 10-1/2 inch squares and piecing them together to form the back.

Well, the first thing that I learned is that not all fabrics will allow you to get four 10.5 inch squares out of one width. I think that I will use 9.5 or 10 inch squares next time.

The second thing that I learned is that you need to be a bit more careful in selecting colors for these squares……I think that I had too much variety in color and print design.

As I pieced these squares into strips, I realized that I had not done a wonderful job of cutting the squares and some of the sides didn’t line up properly. SO, after I had pieced each strip, I put it on the cutting board and evened the edges up….making the square not EXACTLY square.

I knew that I didn’t want to match seams, so I sewed the ends of the strips together into a circle and then randomly cut in the middle of one of the squares. I took them out to my garage (the only place that gives me enough open floor space) and decided on a decent pattern.

My NEXT mistake came in sewing these rows together……I apparently put one (or maybe two) of the rows together backwards and ended up with a whole series of squares of the same color together. Oh well…..it is only the back!!!!

I used Hobbs Fusible Batting to put this quilt together. Now I have to leave it for a few weeks until I get a brilliant idea for how to quilt it……I would welcome any ideas.

Friend bearing gifts

Yesterday, one of my quilting friends, Anita (check out her blog here), came by to pick up her income tax returns, and (unlike most of my clients), came with thank you gifts in hand. She does some gorgeous hand dyes and brought these 5 half yard pieces to add to my stash. She had read on a previous blog post that I was missing light colors so she brought these to help fill in a bit.

They remind me so much of Spring and I cant wait to use them in some way.

Her husband, Bill, has been recently playing with Rust dyeing and has come up with some amazing designs. He sent about 15 pieces and told me to pick my favorite. There were several that I really liked, but this one grabbed my attention…….

I can see cutting out the “chain section” and bordering it with some cool piecing. Another idea to add to the “to-do” list.

Isn’t it wonderful to have such good friends!!!!!

Thank you Bill & Anita!!!!!

Saying Goodbye

On Friday, I attended the funeral of a wonderful lady named Pat Kools. She had been a member of our quilt guild for a long time and I had really gotten to know her in the last 3 years as I attended the Charity Bee.

As I thought about her, the words that came to mind were quiet, kind, concerned, willing, and ready to do whatever came about. She was 70 years old, but I never heard her say “Oh, I could never do that”. Instead she would say, “Now how did you do that?…..I want to try it myself”.

She took my “Photos in Quilts” class back in the Fall and her next big project was making quilts for her two kids. She was kindly waiting until my tax season was over so that I could help her with the computer bits of the quilt. Unfortunately, she didn’t get to make those quilts, but our guild is hoping to make it for her.

In our Bee, she was the one who would volunteer for the ugly jobs and then stick with them until they were done, even while the rest of the group was moving on to the more “fun” activities.

At the funeral, the Priest compared Pat to a small flower in a garden….one that you dont really notice when it is there, but REALLY miss when it is gone.

Pat Kools, you were that beautiful flower and I will miss you!!!!!

My Baby’s Birthday!!!!

Today is my daughter’s 22nd birthday. She is still great friends with 5 girls that she went to High School with and she decided that for her birthday, she wanted them all to come to our house for Chili Cheese Dogs (like they used to do when they were 16). The only difference was that we served Corona Light instead of Diet Cokes!!!!

I decided that we needed to set the party atmosphere so the table was decorated with Hannah Montana stuff and, as you can see, the girls quickly got into the swing of it……

Jenny is third from the left

Michael and I had a wonderful time hosting these special girls!!!!!

To keep something in this post about quilting, here is a photo of five of the girls when I gave them their photo quilts for graduation back in 2005………

Jenny is in the middle….

Great memories and fun friends……can life get any better!!!

Bye for now……