Lady of the Lake: Quilted

The long-arm quilting continues to be less and less intimidating, thankfully. On Tuesday evening I loaded a small-ish quilt - 52" square. Motivating me this time was my little stack of scrap backing and batting. Throwing scraps away has always been a hard thing for me to do. Over time this tendency results in giant stacks that take up valuable space in my sewing and long-arming rooms. 

Using those scraps, though, means that I have to piece the small bits together. That's a task I dislike. So, on the one hand, I feel compelled not to waste scraps, yet on the other hand, I balk at actually putting those scraps to use. What a conundrum.

I adjusted my attitude about piecing a backing and a batting, though, and once I got into it, of course it wasn't as tedious a task as I'd anticipated. Thankfully.

The backing needed about 10 more inches added to it; and the batting required 3 long thin sections to be connected in order to suffice for the 52" quilt. Tuesday evening, as I said, I accomplished these tasks, and then Wednesday, I quilted the quilt.

Lady of the Lakes was pieced in June of 2020. I had all the fabric on hand, so this is a total "stash" quilt, which is quite satisfying. I wrote about it here, and you can see the quilt more fully on that post. 

I had absolutely no issues quilting this; I am so encouraged that I may even put another one on the machine today. I cannot believe how much practice I feel I need to do a meandering stitch. It requires concentration and planning - you have to look ahead a few inches to know where you want to end up, if that makes sense. I try to think about my needle being a bumblebee, and it is just buzzing all around in haphazard fashion across the quilt. The only rule is to not intersect with previous stitches. I do sometimes break that rule - I lose my place and it's the only way out! (Think of painting oneself into a corner - it's that sort of dilemma.)

I now have the binding attached, and my plan is to take this with me to next week's quilt retreat; I can stitch the binding down in the evenings as we relax after a day at our sewing machines. 

In keeping with the theme of using scraps and piecing small bits together, I did that same thing with my binding. There are three different fabrics used in this binding - two are remnants of the pieced blocks in this quilt, and the third is a suitable match from my blue stash. 

And, I made myself dig out that original photograph from a long-ago quilt show which inspired this quilt in the first place. The date in the corner is 8-20-96. Golly. My baby, now 29, was just 4 years old then! Perspective, for sure.

The quilt show was one I went to with my friend Kay; we drove to Michigan. Her daughter who lives there put us up for the night, and we drove on over to Grand Rapids from her house, if memory serves. I do believe it was the first time I'd ever been to Michigan, and I know we borrowed the daughter's cell phone to call her if we ran into any trouble. A cell phone! Such brand new technology back in 1996!

Well, that little trip down memory lane was fun! Now, back to Great Granny Squares and Trip Around the World blocks. I will be needing to pack for retreat, too. 

Happy Quilting, Friends!