1999 to Now

Do you have a quilt top that has hung around since 1999?

I remember exactly where I was when I first was inspired to make this project.  I had picked up some hexie papers at a quilt shop in Texas – we had been down on a house hunting trip because we were moving there from Idaho.

It’s been top status for several years now, but life never slowed down enough for me to even consider getting it layered and basted, or to even think about hand quilting it.

Well things are changing around here.  I am switching up my priorities just a bit.  I NEED down time in the evenings to recharge my batteries, and it all started to become clearer to me when I instituted the “handwork only after supper” when we are at the cabin.

If I can do it at the cabin, I can do it here.  Even if it is just for an hour.  There has to be time to do some slow stitching to recharge the batteries.

So yesterday, Sadie helped me figure out just what I am going to do to quilt this – as that was part of the problem.  HOW was I going to quilt this?

This will be great filler for the large neutral areas!

I want this very traditional.  It was made in a very traditional way, it has a very traditional feel to it.  Not to mention that we are headed headlong into the holidays and quilting on something very Chirstmassy in the evenings sounds like a wonderful idea.

Which backing?!

I posed a question on Facebook and Instagram yesterday afternoon about which backing I should use.  The neutral with the red Chinese symbols would be fun, but the quilting really wouldn’t show.  I might use that if I were machine quilting, but this is a hand quilting project – I went with the tea dye colored solid.

Did you know you can machine baste by long arm?  Check this out: (click to play)

A post shared by Bonnie K Hunter (@quiltville_bonnie) on Nov 9, 2017 at 2:08pm PST

I am using a 90%  silk 10% poly blend batting from Hobbs.  SO excited to quilt with this especially after our silk adventures in China.  I set my machine on a very long stitch and used a serpentine pattern to quilt large wavy lines across the quilt.

The wavy lines eliminate the need for cross hatching, and the quilt is less likely to shift this way when moving the hoop than if I had just done straight lines.

BIG STITCHES!

While quilting,  I use a seam ripper to clip about every 4th stitch and tug the bobbin thread to easily remove stitches from any area that I am quilting.

Basted on the front!

And from the back!

I had just gathered up my hoop, my thread, my needles and was ready to settle in and put in the first stitches when WHAMMO.  POWER OUTAGE. Total blackout.

Mind you, if this were summer, it would still be light enough to see but it was 7pm and pitch black in the entire neighborhood.

Emptying the dishwasher by lamplight!

Isn’t this the way you do it?

I wanted so badly to sit and hand quilt but here I am in the dark - two oil lamps, a candle and a flashlight trying to make due of what turned out to be a 2 1/2 hour situation.  Jeff took a drive outside of the neighborhood to see if he could discover the cause after about an hour – and there was a utilities truck with a bucket replacing a transformer down the road.

In the mean time:

This is kind of cozy!

I finished reading “Left Holding the Bag: by Carol Dean Jones!  Such a fun quilty mystery!  I made my cup of tea from my instant hot water on tap before it went cold.

And then I told Jeff that we might as well eat the ice cream from the freezer before it melted as well – if the power is going to be out, we may as well have a party!

And just about the time I decide to try to piece hexies by lamplight – the power finally came back on again.

Stitching going in!

I stitched while watching two more episodes of Victoria on Amazon Prime.  I'm hooked!  She just asked Prince Albert to marry her.  Such a fun dramatization!

From the back.

So glad I opted for the solid fabric.  It’s going to look really great once done.  Things I observed while basting and quilting this long term project:

Sometimes we just LEARN as we GO!

I started piecing this in the center not really knowing what I was doing.  My stitches are too big and many are visible.  I didn’t pull my thread tight enough.  That first center rosette is kind of a hot mess.

But you know what?  With each round surrounding it, things got better and better until stitches weren’t visible at all.  We learn as we go.  And there is no shame in the imperfections that come with learning something new.

This quilt is a timeline – and I keep adding to it.

Quiltville Quote of the Day!

Sometimes we really need to reexamine our priorities and decide what really is important, and what isn't.

Have a wonderful Friday, everyone!