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| Indigo Shweshwe |
As my blog readers know, I have a million quilts on the go and so many projects already to work on. In fact there are 4 mystery quilts in various stages of progress on my work surface today!
But of course I'm starting Lori's new "Palmateer Point" quiltalong because:
a) it's just a quick tiny little quilt,
b) I've enjoyed so many of her previous projects - you can see some of them here, here and here, and
c) I may have a bit of an addiction problem! LOL
I decided to use a long saved treasure of Shweshwe fabrics that I received from my friend Celeste. I don't want them to be on a shelf in a closet anymore... they need to be in a quilt and this is the one!
The wrong sides of the fabrics are stamped with either "six star toto" or "three cats" which indicate authentic Shweshwe fabrics from South Africa. There is a lot of dye discharge with these fabrics so you must prewash before using them. And they are quite stiff, so washing them first makes them more soft and fun to sew with.
Here are my 4 patch units for step #1 with a wonderful variety of indigo prints. Part #2 has already been posted, so I'm hoping to sew those blocks tonight.
Are you joining in with this quiltalong?
Linking up to Let's Be Social.
Progress is being made in machine quilting my Berenstain Bears baby quilt. This terrible photo of late night stitching shows how I started with some free motion curved lines in white threads, working my way across the white fabrics on the diagonal.
Here's a better day time quilting photo.
I put the walking foot on the machine and did some stitch-in-the-ditch on the horizontal seams to stabilize the whole thing a little more. It seems close to being finished.
How do you know when the quilting is done? I sometimes have a tendency to overquilt... because it's fun and I keep getting ideas so I keep quilting. I'm trying to stop myself before I do that because it's a baby quilt which I want to be soft and cuddly, and less stiff from being overquilted. But now looking at the photos I can see 2 more quilting ideas I could add.
Maybe I should just stop quilting and put the binding on. Then I could focus on the "to-do" list and get started on quilting my UFO of the month!
What's that on the design wall?
I have no idea what this is going to be!
These are the parts for the latest step in Kevin's mystery quilt. I'm really enjoying working with some of my old stash plaids and I also love the background fabric that I found in my stash... is says "BAAAA" in a variety of fonts. It makes me smile and that's my favourite kind of fabric.
Here are the pieces we have sewn in the previous steps. All the blocks are different sizes, so it's a true mystery for me how this is all going to fit together in some kind of quilt layout!
To see more interesting design postings, hop over to Small Quilts.
Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! It's time to take a deep breath, pick up your needle and thread and put some stitches in your project.
I have been working on some alternate blocks for my Life Is Beautiful project. I'm not even finished quilting all the embroidered blocks, but just wanted to see how the alternate blocks were going to look. I stitched in the seams horizontally and vertically, and then stitched around the circle. The block needed more quilting so I traced a second circle to see how it looked, and I like it more now.
I also repaired this block with the one big "toe hanger" stitch in the middle. I cut the thread where the scissor point is, pulled the stitches out on both sides, knotted off both ends and restitched the area. It was fiddly stitching, but I feel much better about that block now.
We have been enjoying some gorgeous fall weather here and this was my view while working on some hand stitching last weekend.
So now it's your turn... what are you hand stitching today? Link up your blog post below and share your progress with us.
An InLinkz Link-up
A friend of mine is having twins soon and so of course baby quilts will be needed! I looked through the UFO closet and pulled out this older Berenstain Bears quilt top. The pattern is called "Arrows Up" and is by Jackie Seyer. This project hasn't been seen on the blog for almost 3 years. It fell into the UFO closet because at the time I thought it was very busy and frenetic looking, and I was going to add some borders to try to calm it down a bit.
But now I have decided it's the perfect size and wildness for a new baby quilt. I pieced a backing from that yellow fabric and some odd leftover pieces. Isn't that a great selvage edge on that fabric?
I have the Aurifil thread all ready to go... white on top and variegated yellow in the bobbin. It's pin basted and ready for "quilt as desired"!
Everyone knows how much I love a mystery quilt! It's next to impossible for me to resist a great mystery. To prove my point, here's a summary of the mystery quilts division of Kathy's Quilts:
1) Temecula's Marvelous Mini Mondays is finished now. All the block patterns have been posted, and the final layout can be seen here. I really enjoyed sewing these tiny blocks and here they are on my design wall. There are supposed to be 20 blocks in the quilt. I don't know why I have 18 blocks, but there you have it! I also have 5 incorrectly made scrappy squares that are too small. You can look for a creative layout that will incorporate all of these blocks...coming "soon".
2) Kevin's mystery quilt called Sapphire Stars, which I am calling Emerald Stars since I am using greens instead of blues. Here are my blocks for that mystery project and a surprise clue was just posted, so that's on the sewing agenda for next week!
3) Blockheads BOW project, which I usually update every week is past the half way point at block # 27 this week.
4) Magnolia Mystery is at the beginning stage and I've just finished cutting all the pieces. The first sewing step has just been posted!
5) Lori over at Humble Quilts is starting a little (20" square) mystery quilt called Palmateer Point. Of course I will start this one too!
How many mystery quilts do you have on the go?!?
