Design Wall Monday Week 9

Monday, again, and the last day of February, which means that spring, according to the calendar at least, is only 3 weeks away. I am soooooooooo looking forward to the warmer weather, and the first day that I can take my morning coffee outside and enjoy my swing and the sounds of the birds, and the wind in the leaves, and the breeze on my face. It feels like this winter has lasted forever. And unfortunately in Southern Ontario, it tends to last far into April. But maybe this year it will be an early spring.

 

 

 I've managed to finish, and hang up on the design wall, 2 quilts this past week. Chocolate Swirls is done, and quilted, and waiting for a binding. And my UFO #10 is up to flimsy stage. It was a struggle to get that one done, and had it not been for this challenge, I don't think it would have gotten finished. However, it's not going to get quilted just yet, so it will join the others in that pile of my own quilts waiting for quilting. Since the challenge rules are so flexible, no matter what number she draws tomorrow, it is going to get assigned to the one that has the least left to do on it, or to the hexagon baby one, since I need to get that one done. I'll decide that tomorrow. For sure it will NOT be one that requires a lot of time and thought, since I don't have a lot of either of those, at this point in time. But, since I finished the last of Evelyn's cross stitch quilts yesterday evening, today is going to be a play day. I'm going to see if, in between browsing design walls at Judy's Patchwork Times I can't get caught up with my 100 block challenge squares. I'll post either later today, or tomorrow on my progress. Then tomorrow, it's back to customer quilts again. I think I'm down to 4 left, but one of the is a 100 x 100 kings size, so it will take quite a while to load and finish.

Back up and running

 After many frustrating hours, and taking apart my long arm, tightening and loosening screws and lots of teeny adjustments, I seem to be back in business. The test is going to be today, (I did all kinds of playing and making sure things were going well on plain muslin yesterday), when I load one of Evelyn's cross stitch quilts, and start to work on that. It is a custom job, with all kinds of starts and stops. I'll take a pic once I get it loaded, and some of the squares done. That's my goal for today. Plus, during the times I need to sit and rest my legs, I'll finish the last border on the blue/brown baby quilt, which I need to come up with a better name for, and maybe sew up some more crazy curves.

Fast forward a couple of days since that paragraph was
 written. The longarm is back to humming along,
 and the baby quilt, which I've decided to name
 "Chocolate Swirl" is finished. And, for the first
 time, I'm piecing a backing for it out of what
 was left from the top. One of the fun things about
 this quilt is that the deep chocolate colour of
the setting triangles, and the cream sashing
 and border fabrics are from the fabric I bought
to make Noel and Laurie's wedding quilt.
The chocolate brown is just about the last of
 this fabric, and I was able to us the border
 strips that I originally cut, that turned out
 not to be a good choice for the top And some other fabrics that I bought at the same time as the ones for the top that just didn't quite work with it, but now I can use them up, instead of having them just sitting on the shelves. I have
 to add a few more 5 inch strips to the back
 to get it up to the right size, then, once
Evelyn's quilt is done, I can load this one
 and get it quilted. So, that's my plan for the rest of the day, before I go in for a 3-11 shift at the hospital.

Design Wall Monday Week 6

 Not much new happening on my wall. I'm still working on the quilt I started on Friday as an antidote to long arm machine issues. Those have almost been resolved, but I'll be spending at least part of today trying to finish it. Never before I have wished I lived in Iowa. That's where these machines are made, and if I lived there, I could just call someone, and have them come over and fix it. (sigh)

I tried putting up the border fabric for this quilt, that I thought would work, only to find that it doesn't. It is extremely blah and boring. No punch, no pizzaz, adds absolutely nothing to the quilt, just fades off.


So, I decided that I have enough of the blue fabrics to do a 4 1/2 inch pieced border around it.  Not bad, but still not there. They blend into each other too much
What if I put some narrow brown pieces in between the blue squares? I think that's it!! Now all I have to do is figure out the math to get it all to fit. And, if you keep going to the end of this post, past these pictures............

 These are my next 2 squares for the 100 block challenge The applique one isn't finished yet. There are still some pieces to go on it, and some embroidery. I might end up checking out our local Michael's store, to see if there are more fabric markers out the that I can use to draw the embroidery designs with, that will show up on the dark fabric. And now, to check out the directions for the next step in fixing my machine.

You know you're a Quilter when........

You know you're a Quilter, capital "Q" Quilter when, your longarm machine is giving so much trouble that you could cheerfully throw it out the window, assuming you could lift it and it would fit through the window. That's how I was feeling last night, and most of today. I think we have a diagnosis now, and am just waiting for the instructions to fix it. But, back to the subject at hand, do you:

go out for a walk? ................. nope
grab a stiff drink? .................. nope, unless Champanade counts
take a long,hot bath? .............. nope
find a good book? .................. well, yes, if it's on audio disk.

What you do if you are a capital "Q" Quilter is............... pull lovely, brand new fabric off the shelf, and start a brand new quilt. Especially if the brand new fabric is wonderfully cute fabric for a soon to be grandson. The pattern is from the Feb/March 2011 Quilt magazine, which was in my Christmas stocking from Noel and Laurie. It's called "Raspberry Swirl" There are still 2 borders to go on it, yet. A narrow cream, like the sashing, and then a wide light blue and cream plaid sort of check like fabric. Sock monkeys, and cartoon puppies........ so cute.