Quilting and Basketball!

This came off of the machine yesterday afternoon!

As much as I love to hand quilt, a large quilt like this could take me at least a YEAR to complete, if not longer.  If that was the “only” sewing I did with no piecing on anything else at the time I might be able to get it done sooner. 

I started out as a hand quilter.  But as motherhood and busy life took over, I became a machine quilter on my domestic machine inspired by Harriet Hargrave. 

Bigger quilts became a problem, and I still kept a quilt in hand quilting frame in my dining room for years.  And because THAT wasn’t something that I could take time to sit at every day, it took longer and longer to get any kind of hand quilted project to completion.

I bought my first long arm quilting machine in 1995 and have never looked back.

However you quilt – no method is “better” than any other as long as it gets the job done for you allowing you to move on to the next quilt!

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Quilting it Up!

There is quilting happening at the Quiltville PO!

It feels so good to see this top finally becoming a real quilt.  The blocks were started last year – they were kind of an “on again, off again” thing.  It was a travel project for a while – grabbing bits of hotel room sewing time while teaching on the road.

When we really hunkered down to do the last of the big jobs at Quiltville Inn, these blocks languished. They were also pushed aside during the time our Frolic Mystery became my main focus.  It’s understandable. Some projects just do that – fluctuate in and out of productivity mode.

The biggest job yesterday was pulling yardage sized pieces of lesser loved fabrics and piecing a back that wouldn’t look “TOO TERRIBLE” with the scrappiness of the blocks in the quilt top.

Oh, these are some doozies.  And I laughed and giggled all the way.

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Borders and New Beginnings

These Sugar Loaf blocks have captured my interest -

They are nearly all I can think about.

I tried to find my photos of the original vintage quilt that first inspired these blocks – but it was a photo from within an antique shop maybe 4 years ago – I can’t even remember where!

The cropped photo was used as as background for THIS Quiltville Quote of the Day and I wrote more about this project in yesterday’s post.

With only that much to go on – I started experimenting.  And I’ve got it down to a formula of a certain number of strips in each strip set, the length of each strip determined to give me the least amount of waste with just enough “wiggle room” to re-trim the strip set should a cut go awry.  I am on a veritable roll!

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Down the Rabbit Hole and Up the Squirrel Tree!

I had a day to MYSELF yesterday!

It was GLORIOUS!

Not that I don’t like being around people, but honestly – I can’t remember when I had a whole afternoon into the evening of SOLITUDE.

And it was a Sunday – mail doesn’t have to be dropped off until 4:00pm this afternoon so, I made the most of every blessed minute.

Super Bowl?  WHAT SUPER BOWL!?

The only bowl I was concerned with was the bowl of ice cream waiting for me at the end of the day.  But until then:

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