Fixing Those Eyelashes

 I never want to leave readers hanging, so I am here today to show you that I did manage to fix the disastrous eyelash problem on the batik quilt I quilted on the long arm. Click back here to see the awful reality of the situation.

My new stitches look pretty darn good, and it is my hope that those perforations from the previous stitches will disappear when laundered.

I took several pictures of various parts of the back. The blessing in all this is that the design on the batik hides the perforations rather well when viewed from a normal distance. These close-up looks enhance the issue, obviously.

For those who have never taken a quilt off the long arm to remove bad stitching, then returned said quilt to the long arm for finishing - it's not fun! I feel like I made a real mess of the meandering stitches, especially when I inadvertently ran into stitches from the original go-around. Once again, that busy look of the batik fabrics, both front and back, help to diminish the quilting.

The front?? You have not seen it yet. This quilt is a gift, and I am only willing to give you a sneak peak at this point.

Do you know that I now have loaded another quilt onto the long arm, and the first pass of quilting needs to be removed because of eyelashes?!? Waaahhh! At least I caught it before doing the entire quilt. I will be removing stitches today.

I do hope you are having a great Saturday! Our day began cloudy and cool, but it now looks as though the sun will clear those clouds away.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Always Learning

The picture above features two quilts that have a romantic, floral, shabby chic look to them. The quilt on the bottom I hand-pieced about 6 years ago. To make it even more special, it was hand-quilted by my grandmother. The pattern is called "English Elegance," and was the cover of a 1999 BH&G American Patchwork and Quilting magazine. I made it entirely from my stash, with no special purchases except for the backing. The quilt folded on top is called "Tag Sale" by Carrie Nelson of Miss Rosie Quilts. I saw it on display at a nearby quilt shop, bought the pattern, and used a fat-pack I had on hand. I machine-pieced and hand-quilted it. Both quilts were long, drawn out projects, but I am so glad that I finished them. They reside in my guest room.
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It just seems natural that a retired teacher would be interested in learning. In thinking of all the the things I want to do in my retirement, learning stuff takes a major role. Learning to blog effectively is one of the items on my list of things to learn, and since my first post on Wednesday I have done quite a bit of self-directed study of the ins and outs of Blogspot. I am confident that I have the blogging part down; the daunting aspect of this is the photography. So, with the help of daughter Erin, an artist with the "eye" I lack, we have taken several dozen pictures and she has provided pointers for what she considers necessary for the most pleasing pictures. However, there are two schools of thought at play here: her desire for artistically placed quilts and my desire to see the whole quilt from a quiltmaker's standpoint. So, the pics we took today are all to Erin's liking, i.e. they are artistically pleasing. And while I like them, they do not offer the quilter a good full view of the quilts with borders. So there are still things to learn.

Here is an update on my quilting activity since the previous post. On Thursday, I did little more than dig out a project to take with me on Friday morning to my quilt group. It was fun digging through some long-forgotten UFOs, and I have a bit of renewed interest in finishing a few!

So Friday morning, off to quilt group. I took the "row-a-month" project (begun in 1998!), of which all that remains to be done is the applique row. I have decided that my method will be needle-turn applique, and in the 3 hours we worked, I got one bird done. (Note to self: take a picture of this progress to post here.)

Once back home, I pulled out the batik circle quilt. The top was finished except for the borders, for heaven's sake! So down to work! I finished up those borders and now have a lovely, cheery bright quilt top for a twin bed ready to take to my long-arm lady.

As the evening wore on, I wanted to watch a couple of shows with my daughter, so I set up the quilting frame and Ott Lite. I managed to finish 3 blocks on the baby quilt, bringing the total completed blocks to 18. My fingers are just so sore, it is hard to do more.