Imagination at the Show

My Imagination 1 quilt was one of the ones I submitted to the show, so here are some photos of the (pretty much) completed quilt. It's not absolutely finished, but I'm tired of working on it and it's perfectly functional, so let's call it usefully-finished :)

I was only slightly upset that they draped this quilt after I painstakingly sewed on sleeves, hrumpf! *grins*

I'm glad I put the orange/red and purple zinger circles on the quilt, imagine it without them!


Here's a section that's not quite finished - something will go between the circles in the light green border, some kind of connecting motif...


The lighting at the show wasn't ideal, it was also already dark out, but you can just make out the outline quilting around the square shapes/strips.


What does this make you think of? Lilypads that a frog just jumped on to cause the concentric circles? Planets?


Here you can see the creative vine ranking along the border, it's growing square flowers with squares inside them.


Circles, circles, circles...


Who knows, I might be stitching on this quilt in years to come, adding to it when I feel like it :)

It's such a super soft quilt (thanks to the fabrics, some kind of special weave), I'm guaranteed to use that one when I feel under the weather and want to be cozy!

Northern Solitude

ASIDE: Isn't today an amazing date? Can you imagine how many people are getting married today??? 10-10-10! :)

2nd ASIDE: Ah, you should know me by now ;) Of course I went and googled my question. I didn't find out how many people are planning to get married, though something might be in the news tomorrow - instead, I found out quirky stuff about this date from this site. For example:

--> In mathematics, the date of 10/10/10 or 101010 is divisible by the number of days in a week, which is seven (7), which is considered to be very lucky. However, the date also appears to have a yin and yang situation where the date is also divisible by the number six (6), which is considered to be very unlucky.

--> It is even more significant that the date 10/10/10 at 10:10am (10:10) or 10:10pm (22:10) to be a very lucky time. One reason for this comes from the story of George Inmad who had been deaf since birth. On 10/10/1910 at 10:10pm (22:10) he suddenly was able to hear with no explanation from the doctors. It was a medical mystery and the only conclusion they had was that he was very lucky. From then on, it is believed that you will have good luck if you touch your ears at 10:10am or pm.

Back to your regular feature: quilts!


Only 1.5 years after I started it, this little quilt is finished! What pushed me in the end??? Someone I know wanted to buy it for his first grandchild :)


I added a label and a bit of extra quilting on the squares, and two days later it went to its new home.

In the end, the quilting consists of outline quilting on the squares:


... some motives being outlined in the squares and something I saw on Dianne Gaudinsky's blog (see my blog list on the right) in the narrow light blue border:

(This photo makes the quilt look huge with the background glimpse, doesn't it? It's only the regular 30x40" I use for baby quilts...)

In some squares, I quilted along lines of the print, e.g. along the green vines in the dark square below:


This border seemed like a good idea when I started, but was very intense - when I finally finished it, I was in no mood to do anything in the wide border, so it's left unquilted - incidentally, having finished the blue border quilting was also when I put the quilt away until last week.

Tsh-tshing, Finish #1 on my "QUIPs To Finish in 2010" list on the right! :)


PS: I wonder why I put the dark green square next to the brown square in the centre... hmm. Must not have known the trick of taking a photo of my layout and then checking that out instead of the actual quilt - photos give a much better impression of the overall layout, I find. Do you have a trick like that?

Yesterday, I baked a lovely apple cake with caramel sauce that Leslie showed on her beautiful blog:


I thought I had a bundt pan but couldn't find it despite searching and searching - only then did I realize that I thought about buying one and then ended up not to ;) Senility is setting in!

Also, I went to a National Park yesterday to go for a hike. I had a kite along that I bought this summer. I've realized there is no easier way to recapture childhood than to go and fly a simple kite (i.e. nothing fancy, just the regular diamond shape with a tail!).

Go ahead, try it!

So Many Stitches

As promised, here's Finish #2, the Love U in green quilt. Concentric squares take a long time to hand-quilt, I found out. I don't know how hand-quilters do the intricate patterns (on traditional quilts), which must include thousands of stitches! (Hundreds of thousands? Millions?)

There's something about hand-quilting that just looks more traditional, isn't there???


Or maybe I just choose square quilt-patterns that I wouldn't do with free-motion (wobbly straight lines for me) or a walking foot (too much turning) machine quilting.

I find that printed flanelette on the back makes the quilting and any mistakes disappear, but you can see the pattern even on this small picture.


As mentioned, I did concentric squares in the solid green blocks. The prints are MODA Love U, I picked all the green and yellow prints and substitute a few from my stash to reach the right number.


For the border, I tried another stencil out of my collection - I'm usually more a fan of wavy lines, but the straight edges of this braid seemed to suit this quilt.


Now that I look at it on the photo, the briad reminds me of a strand of DNA ;) Such a science geek, hahaha!

I might yet stich in the ditch around the little yellow squares in the 4 corners, they look a bit lonely right now, and that wouldn't take too much effort.


Overall, despite taking quite a while (4 or 5 months, I think), I'm glad I hand-quilted this quilt and even more glad that it's done!


I won't even show you a picture of my pour right middle finger (the one that I use to push the needle through). My ring finger is starting to have the same hole in it, because I switched over when the middle finger was too damaged to touch a needle ;) It'll heal, and it better, because I still have about 3 circles to quilt on my BIG hand-quilting project, the Imagination 1 quilt, and that must be done for the quilt show! (Though I bet no one would notice a half circle in among all the concentric circles! So the pressure to finish is only moderate - apart from my pride!)

Soon, I'll be ready to baste and quilt the Filmstrip Cafe quilt, still debating quilting options. I might do parallel straight lines on it, as I've seen it on other quilts and liked it. Oh well, time for another anti-strep-throat pill, ugh.

What's New?

Well, apart from the Monkey Mechanic quilt, quilting action has been slow around here.

I'm working away on the Hoot Hoot Owl applique.


Here I'm attaching the branches. After the first branch came out a bit wavy, I basted the second branch on first and then I appliqued it on. I think you're supposed to do that sometimes anyway, I just forgot. A few more stitches on the branch and then that quilt is ready for basting and (machine)quilting.


I've also been quilting on the Love U in Green quilt. Great little project to take to my bee meetings (we've met twice so far, it's fun!). I decided on concentric squares and like the effect quite a lot. As you can see, I've got a bit of attention deficit going on, as I can't seem to finish a square before starting the next one, so I have several on the go, in various stages of completion :)


I'm also on the final touches of the Imagination 1 quilting, here's a sneak preview:

The Border:
Some of the circle quilting:

Unfortunately, it's been much too hot to hand-quilt these past few days, and the soccer world cup demanded some attention as well, but now that all that is over, I'll get back to stitching :)

Oh, and some of you had wondered about the border on the WonderChain quilt, this is the stencil I used for it. I really liked working with stencils. I've tried free-hand hand-quilting before, as well as free-hand drawing a pattern on, and it just doesn't look as good as a stencil in terms of uniformity. I have a small collection of stencils now and will certainly use them again!

Wonder Chain Done

I finished the border quilting on the wonderland chain, or the Wonder Chain, as I call it :), so it's now time for binding!

I've recently started attaching the binding with my needle in the right position (as opposed to the center position).


I find that both sets of feeds (on my walking foot and the machine) now grip the bulky sandwich of quilt and binding. Also, since I cut my binding strips only 2" wide for double-fold binding, having the needle off to the right and adjusting my quilt position only a little bit - I get a really REALLY scant 1/4" seam, so that attaching the binding is much easier. Before I switched the needle position, I often had to cut some fabric/batting away from the quilt edge. No more!


I'm also still joining my binding at the end instead of overlapping the ends. It just looks so much neater. The time it takes to join the strips in the end is made up for by the trouble I save sewing on the bulky overlap :)


And... done :)


I was on such a roll, I pretty much hand-stitched the entire binding in one sitting.


I LOVE how the border quilting pops out! Just LOVE it! Doesn't it look tasty? Totally 3-D :)


I started making a pair of scissors like the ones in the snip snip print in one of the white centers between the chains, but I really didn't like the look of it, so erased it.


I think I might just leave the quilt as is... :) Don't mess with a good thing!

Right now I'm going through a highly productive quilting phase. My quilt room (i.e. living room) looks accordingly, sigh... I'll blog about the different projects you see here in the next week(s), so stay tuned!

{next to the folded up Disaster (Triple Irish Chain) quilt that is STILL waiting for a border, basting and quilting - *sigh* - you can find my Imagination 1 quilt on the couch - I'm almost done with the border! Yippee! To be revealed soon!}

What a mess! *grins*

Full Imagination

Almost done, yay! I've made some decisions about the borders, still working on that...

Here's a view of most of the quilt, with some of the backing and the one lonely raw edge still to be bound :)


Now some concentric circles in full force (I like them a lot!):

I did the small/narrow circles free-hand, simply 'eyeing' it, but the larger ones turned out wonky, so I used chalk to mark them first.

The city-scape or bargraph (depending if I feel metropolitan or scientific) was simply outlined with a line approx. 1/4" from the seam.


Here's the start of the border quilting. Circles on the inner one, I'm still figuring out what to do in between, I have some ideas.

And in the outer, darker border, I'm quilting a vine but instead of flowers there are diamonds quilted in between, to repeat the round/edgy theme of this quilt.


And, with raw edge and still some visible basting thread, this quilt is in full use already!

Getting Edgy

Oh, I'm laughing about my own title because this post is about binding and quilt edges ;)

I just couldn't wait anymore to start finishing my Imagination 1 quilt. I'm not done with all the quilting yet, though I'm getting there, but I was just itching to put the binding on!

So the other night, I started cutting the edges away to square the quilt up.


Oh, it was so exciting, a big step (as opposed to all the teeny-tiny handstitches!).

I sewed the prepared binding strip on the next morning, and lo and behold, I had miscalculated so enormously that a whole side was missing. Silly me :)

I hand-stitched the 3 sides I had binding for on anyway, and will add to the binding strip soon, to complete that step. It feels awesome to work with a finished edge, anyway!

The concentric circles are working out really nicely by the way. I had blogged about the design here, and I'm pretty much sticking with it. You'll see some pictures soon!