Friday, October 29, 2010

starting something and finishing it

I am the queen of incompletion.  Is that a word?  In an effort to finish things before I start them I am stuck in the quilting mode...I've been quilting several quilts and that's all I'll be doing for along time.  I finished the green monster quilt.  I have 4 quilt tops to quilt now.  I feel no inspiration to do it.

I inherited several sawtooth star quilt blocks from the dear lady that passed away leaving a crazy amount of material that I in turn inherited.  If I had wanted I could have taken several complete quilt sandwiches that she was ripping the messed up quilting stiches out of.  But I did get tons of quilt blocks.  I added a few to it and now I have a full sized quilt that is very pretty and not typically something i would make.

I started quilting this quilt and forgot that once you start a quilt design you must stick with it for every block in that quilt.  So in turn it's taking me alot longer than i like to quilt this quilt that I didn't even piece!
















I basically started from each corner and quilted down into the center of each star and added feathers or leaves (whatever they ended up looking like ha).

there it shows up alot more there...  it's not perfect but all together it looks pretty good!





















Right now I'm stiching in the ditch down each border i may quilt circles in the small navy squares.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

finished green monster


 I finally finished the quilt.  It did fit my bed when I finished with alittle drape even.  I did forget the shrinking aspect.  I am happier with the quilt now that it's been washed and dried.  It's nice and crinkly, but still soft 80/20 batting.


theres some more pics of the top and back.  I had to choose my thread did i want it to really show up on the front or the back...i chose the back cause i can live with that..it's kinda cool looking on the back minus some thread nests.  I gotta find some magic bobbin washers soon.  I think that's the problem. Next machine will have a traditional bobbin case.  I had tension problems all the time.  At the end I figured out that my bobbin was too tight so i loosened it a tad...oila...it worked like a charm.  On the curves of the flowers you really have to keep it slow or you will have tension issues...i tend to go too fast and have tons of breaking etc.  Cotton thread might need to be nixed for the next project.


So now that the big green is finished I can move on.  Yesterday I made the boys some flannel pants.

I enjoyed the whole zipping the flannel through the machine and being done!  I think it took an hour to make 4 pairs of pants.  I used Simplicity 2742.  I've used this pattern for the last two years.  It's very easy.  I did not make pockets on these pants cause they wear them to bed so it was even faster!.  I was able to get two pairs for 2 boys for only 4 yards of fabric...(that was on sale for 2.99/yard at Hancock's (score)).

Next week I plan to start buying the batting and backing for the boy's quilts...plus i need to start my Christmas sewing projects...i really wish i got paid to sew!!