Another finish.....

I have another finish!! Yippee, woohoo, hurray!! Finished as in quilted, bound and first wash so that it is in its soft and cuddly self. It's a pattern from Judy Laquidara's Patchwork Times site called Connect the Dots.  She offered it as a mystery I'm not sure how long ago, but I must confess to having cheated. I saw a picture of some one's partially finished quilt, and so I had a good idea of what the finished product would be, before I selected my fabrics. I am extremely happy with the way it turned out. It is quilted with a curvy spiral pantograph that I adapted from a border stencil. I like the way the diagonal lines of the quilt are reproduced in the spiral, but the curves soften the angles a bit. I used my favourite binding technique of faux piping, which I first saw demonstrated here It is a nice way to do binding completely by machine, and have it look really good. I had bought a large amount of the blue fabric, and so I was able to use it in the top, binding and backing. It was a purchase from Len's Mills when they had one of their 50% off the lowest ticketed price sales a few years ago. The quilting design is quite visible on the back. I'm linking

this post up to a blog I started following recently, called Crazy Mom Quilts She has a linky party specifically for finishes accomplished during the week. It is actually a good motivator. There is also a linky over at Amylouwho show and tell friday that I'm going to link to as well. It's worth while checking out both of these. I have a couple more that I want to see if I can get finished before next week. It's a great way to establish a goal, and a timeline to work towards. And now, I'm off to go work on one of those quilts.

Another finish

I have my Mac computer back, and all seems to be well with it. While I was unable to post pictures or anything, I managed to get my Connect the Dots quilt, designed by Judy Laquidara finished. I exercised considerable self discipline, while is not at all one of my strengths, and worked on it, without starting anything else, until it was finished. The last border went on last evening. I must confess that stating goals publicly here is helping with the self discipline thing, and I really like the feeling of accomplishment from actually finishing stuff. So far, off my goal list, is Evelyn's cross stitch quilt, which I didn't manage to get a picture of. This quilt was on that list, so it can be crossed off, and I have 2 of my own small quilts off the machine, and quilted, and waiting to be trimmed and bound. Not bad, considering it isn't the middle of the month yet. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I have 15 of the Pineapple quilt along blocks sewn together as well. But now, I must sign off and get ready for work.

When all else fails, read the instructions

After supper, I came upstairs and started to work on clue #3 from Judy's mystery. It was going really well, and I got all of the pieces done that needed to be sewn today, so that I could start to put the blocks together. That's when I hit a snag. I put all the elements together, looked at it, and couldn't figure out why it didn't look the way it was supposed to look. Then it hit me. I had pieced the small 4 patches in the wrong direction. They are supposed to look like the top picture, with the brown going diagonally through the block. I have all of them, except this one that I just re-did, pieced like the second picture. All of them, 34 of them, all pieced wrong. ARRRRGGGGG!!!! So, I am spending the rest of my evening, taking all these blocks apart, so that I can put them back together properly. (sigh)

Design Wall Monday Nov 1

Wow! I can't believe it is November, already. On my design wall today, are a couple of things. I am doing Judy's mystery so, I've put my progress so far, up on the wall. Also, I participated in a Card Trick swap with an online group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cdnquiltswappers/  and I've put those blocks up, just to study and get a feel for them. I have a couple of ideas of how I want to put them together, and I've posted a picture here, of one of the ideas. If I do this one, though, I'll either have to make more blocks, since I only have 12, and I think I'd probably do plain triangles around the outside, Go on over to Judy's Patchwork Times to see more inspiring design walls