Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Quilting Grades

Snow. Snow. And more snow! This is our third snowstorm in a week. But tonight the snow caused my quilt guild meeting to be cancelled, so that means there were a lot of unhappy quilters sitting at home watching American Idol instead of visiting their quilting friends and seeing beautiful quilts! Oh well...better to be safely snuggled under a warm quilt, than to be driving on the highways in a snowstorm. This is a photo of my hedge after our second snowstorm...the little branches were so weighed down by all the snow. I hope it survives this brutal winter weather.
In all my spare moments I have been working on the comfort quilt. I finished stitching in the ditch in all directions and gave myself a "B" for not riding up out of the ditch too often. But I gave myself a "C" for my basting job because look what happened at the ends of some of the seams! I got some big nasty bulges ahead of the walking foot. That means I didn't pull the quilt top taut enough when basting, and the walking foot pushed the excess fabric along as I quilted.
I then gave myself a "D" for attitude...and not being kind, gentle and patient with myself, since I had tried my best!! Once I calmed down and re-pinned all the borders, I moved on to my favorite part... the free motion quilting. I used a varigated Sulky blendable thread to quilt a flower in the centre of each of the 48 blocks. And finally I earned an "A" and started having fun!
While working on the flowers, the quilt was whispering something about ideas for quilting the border and I'm eager to get to that part and see how it works out. I wonder if this quilt will be quiet when it is finished??!!

9 comments:

Darlene said...

And, I'll give you an A+ for being a great blogger friend. :-)

Paula, the quilter said...

Lovely free motion. Do you have a BSR? We are often the harshest critics of ourselves.

Andrea said...

Aww I was going to say that Darlene -lol !! Beaten to it again. Kathy I just tagged you for the weird/random thing that's going round. Feel free to ignore !

sewnut said...

the flower is a perfect motif for the block center - it sings "smile, have fun"

Julie H said...

Hi Kathy

I do like your quilts a lot, but I actually popped by to say congratulations!!! You won third prize on my blog give-away the sterling silver and pearl earrings.

Please e-mail me your details to julieh7777 at yahoo dot com

Greenmare said...

it's great! ALL of it!

Helen in the UK said...

Love your quilted flowers - just perfect for those blocks :)

Unknown said...

So gorgeous work! The block you show here is absoloutly beautiful.

Jacqui's Quilts said...

Kathy:

That flower is just gorgeous! I've been practising these flowers too, but keep having to quilt boy's quilts so can't practise too often LOL...two girl quilts coming up and it'll be fun to get back to flowers like this. Love that variegated thread. I've been buying a different spool at the Marsh Store in Coldstream everytime I go there and am getting quite a nice selection now :-). I learned to free motion quilt feathers this past summer and am just starting to do the borders on a batik quilt that's been waiting for ages for me to brave it again! Looking forward to seeing the whole quilt done!

Jacqui in SW Ontario Canada