Marking My Quilt

This long-time UFO has been nagging me to be finished for months now. I wrote about my interest in finishing it in this post from late February. I was experimenting with my grandmother's Pounce marking tool. It worked as long as I didn't carry my work around with me, but when I transported the quilt to and from our Friday morning Frankfort Girls sessions, I often lost my lines in the process.

This is a messy way to mark, so I disliked the idea of taking it along to mark in someone else's house.

This week, I realized that I only had about 30" of border remaining, so I dug out Grandma's marking pencils and used one of them to finish it off.

It stays on the quilt so much better. While I can see benefits to using the Pounce method, it does have its drawbacks. There's a time and a place for both, I can see now. Use Pounce when you have a lot of quilting to mark and when you are going to only quilt at home. Use pencils when you have just a bit to quilt and want to take it with you. Pounce is quite dusty (chalk dust); pencils need frequent sharpening and the method can be tiring on one's back.

I know I can finish this this week. We are watching a lot of ballgames - the Cavs are winning, and the Indians are on almost every night, too. We love our Cleveland sports teams! I like to feel productive while I watch, so this is a perfect game-time activity.

I will be reporting back with a binding and a finish soon; very soon, I hope!
Linking up today with Finish It Up Friday/Crazy Mom Quilts. Hope you will take some time to stop on over there to see what everyone is up to this week.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Old Business on the Agenda

Several topics I have recently covered here on the blog seem to need or warrant my following up, so I will take care of this "old business" today.

On October first, when demonstrating hand quilting at history day, I was disappointed with the graphite marking pencil I'd used. I shared that experience here. I have since purchased the marker shown below. Since several readers left me comments concerning the same issue, I will try to make it a priority in the next week to use this marker and give you all a full report.

 Yesterday, I spent the day sewing with friends at Terry's. I worked very diligently on the two T-shirt quilts and made lots of progress. The assembly-line method for these two quilts seems to be working very well. I will bring pictures at some point, so stay tuned for that.

The girls who also quilted - Jan, Sharon O. and, of course, Terry - all worked on some pretty things, so I will devote tomorrow's post to their efforts.

Back at home, I have Erin's Diamonds to quilt. I am still feeling like this is going to be a very time-consuming project, but I have to have faith! If I do just a couple hours of quilting each day, then progress will at some point become evident. Right now, it still feels like I have just started.

I hope I am not recycling pictures. (Just checked; this one is. Sorry.) It's the nature of hand quilting, I suppose, which makes every picture look the same as the last. I may very well (inadvertently, of course) run a duplicate. Still pretty to look it, if I do say so myself. *wink*

I have a little helper keeping me company. For the last week and a half, Erin's cat Rocky has been with us. He seems to enjoy observing the quilting process - or maybe he just likes snoozing on the back of the chair.

Weather in Ohio has been glorious lately. I do so love October's humidity-free blue skies. The two pictures shown here are from our wooded back and side yards. Fall colors are playing second fiddle to falling leaves. Our color is never overly spectacular, but we do have pretty views, nonetheless. These sun-drenched days with temperatures in the low 70s are total perfection.

I asked for help a few posts back in trying to reconstruct my blog roll. Apparently, Blogger had some issues, as others have experienced similar losses. It's nice to know that I wasn't responsible for the deletion. I am slowly adding in some of my old favorites, and am discovering new blogs, too, as commenters leave me the names of blogs they regularly visit. If quilting blogs are of interest to you, click on some of the links in my blog list and surf around for awhile. Make sure you have lots of time to browse, as it's easy to get lost in the massive web of quilt blogs out there.

Happy Quilting, Friends!