Time for Tea, Take Two

Is there such a thing as too much alliteration? Probably, but it makes me smile! Today was a work day, I had a dress for homecoming come in that needed to be done at the last minute. A dress that was very encrusted with beading and needed to be taken in. So that means removing beads and securing threads so the rest of them don't go flying with every movement, plus the actual sewing. So that took up a nice chunk of my day.

I did have time this evening to do a little spot of quilting as well as filling a custom request. I finished this set of quilted shoe bags - made for a dancer who wants to protect her shoes when she travels! They came out very cute, and my photography skills have vastly improved since I listed my original bag two years ago. I think I need to retake some of those!

Then I worked on finishing this little quilt. It is made from leftover scraps after cutting triangles from strips. The pieces were too big and pretty to throw away, and this is the second quilt I have made from them. I thought it might be fun to put some pictures of the quilt in progress in the listing. So I am going to share them here first! I think my heart skills are improving. A lot of these actually looked like real hearts, not my usual heart or leaf? shapes. I suppose there is hope for my limited drawing skills after all!

Stitching the binding on - and you can see another good looking heart! I am so in love with the method of sewing the binding on totally by machine - it is so fast, and I have it down to a science. It makes binding go so much faster than stitching by hand, and I think it looks great. I also put a couple of borders on a panel for a baby quilt. So I just need to figure out what to use for a back and I have another one to get quilted. I'm glad I'm getting some of these projects finished up, it will really help unclutter my sewing room, and it's nice to add some new items to my Etsy shop!

Color Kazoo Blocks and Rails

I finished quiting the Color Kazoo quilt and it came out pretty well. I quilted the center with boxes, it wasn't as easy as stippling at first, but it got better as I went. It's probably easier on a long arm machine, but it wasn't too bad. I thought it looked better after washing, and I think it's a nice little quilt. I hope to get my next quilt basted tomorrow, but have to go get more batting first.
I had a good day Wednesday. I drove down to Gold Beach to judge the quilts for the fair. It was my first judging experience and although I was pretty nervous about it, everything went well and I learned a lot. One of the things I learned was that the reason judges pick on your batting is that may be the only thing to pick on! Luckily we didn't have too many categories with more than two quilts, there was one with 6. They were bed quilts. They were varying in difficulty, but all were well done, and the bindings were one of the big deciding points. Though each one looked like it was done with care, there were differences in the corners, the fullness of the bindings, and the way they were stitched down. So, make sure you take as much care in finishing your binding as you do in your piecing or quilting.

What I look for in a binding: The binding should be even all the way around the quilt, the batting should fill it all the way to the edge, the corners should be mitered, all the same, and nice and square. The joint should not be noticeable, and the general preference is stitched invisibly on the back. I do a lot of mine top-stitched to the front, though and generally get good marks for those! I think ideally the binding should be the same width on the back as on the front, but that's flexible as long as it is consistent in size on both sides.

Remember, the binding is your last chance to make a good impression, whether your quilt is judged or not. Make it as good as you can!

Wallpaper is not fun..

to scrape off your walls. When we bought this house 13 years ago it had hideous wallpaper in several rooms. The first room I tackled was the upstairs room with bright pink, yellow, orange, and lime green parasol ladies. We kindly refer to it still as the ugliest wallpaper known to man. It was put up with about three buckets of wallpaper paste, so I spent days and days scrubbing the paste off. Then I spent a day painting it a nice clean white and stenciling ivy around the top. It was lovely, but it totally killed my ambition of dealing with the wallpaper in the front room. Fortunately for me, my husband covered the walls of this room with his music collection and other goodies, so it was a good excuse not to have to do anything about the ugliness of it. Well, now that he has officially gained his own room to have his stuff in, this room is empty and needs to be spruced up before we refurnish it. This week has been filled with buckets of water, scrapers and deciding on paint colors. I have to fill some holes this morning, and hopefully this afternoon I will transform the first room people see when they come into my house into a thing of beauty. I hope! Before and after pictures will happen next week.

Needless to say, not a lot of quilting happened this week, but I did get borders on two of my tops, prepared the backs, and best of all made the binding! I discovered last week what a lovely thing it is to do the binding when you finish the top, instead of waiting until you finish the quilting. When I finish quilting a quilt I am always bummed out because I have to get the binding made before I can finish. If you do the binding before you do the quilting it makes it great, all you have to do is trim the edges of the top and sew it on. I highly recommend doing it this way! Plus that it makes me plan ahead. Often I don't even think about the binding until after I quilt, then I am scrambling for the right fabric. This way you have to actually pick it out and have it on hand so you are less likely to have to "make do" on the binding, which is the frame for your quilt. Not really the time to use whatever you can find.

This is the quilt I put borders on yesterday. Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the pattern I used. I made it for a shop sample, so I don't have the patten anymore, and the shop isn't carrying it (which is why I got the sample back). Hopefully I can remember so I can give credit to the designer when it is quilted. The pattern didn't include the border, but I really think it needed the border to frame it. I got a nice blue green color to put on the back. I am thinking about quilting it with a pastel variegated thread I have, but I'm not too sure what I am going to quilt on it yet. Still in the thinking mode!

This is the sunrise I saw last week. It was absolutely spectacular! What followed it up was an equally spectacular rainstorm - so I guess there is truth to the saying, Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. This beauty makes me think of the Glory of God - as awesome as the beauty of this sunrise is, it is nothing compared to the beauty of our Creator! And with that thought I will exit and start working on the transformation of my now unwallpapered room.