Tuesday 23 April 2013

Joys of Machine Quilting.


Its been a while since I've posted somehow I keep running out of time.  Jack has taken over my laptop for his uni studies since his is playing up.  I mostly use my ipad now but I've never done a blog post using it and I haven't figured out how to put my photos on it yet either.  As I've mentioned before I'm not very good with technology so it all seems a bit overwhelming at times.  Not to mention time consuming.  I lost hours today trying to figure out a couple of my technical hitches and didn't get anything figured out and might have deleted one of my favourite blogs from my reader account!

This is the quilt that has had me questioning my quilting abilities.  I mentioned in my last post that its been basted for 2 years and I couldn't figure out how I wanted to quilt it.  Well I thought I'd figured it out so I machine quilted diagonal lines through the blocks and double straight lines through the block centres.  I hated doing the machine quilting I think stitching straight lines is a lot harder than doing free motion quilting.  I'm not overly happy with how it turned out (I've photographed its good side).  I ended up with a couple of nasty pleats in a couple of the blocks.  I haven't put the binding on yet but when it is finished I think I'm going to try washing it and putting it in the clothes dryer so at least all my quilting might look wrinkled.  I need this quilt finished I don't want to spend any more time on it.  Now I'm thinking maybe I should have tried to fmq it, it probably would have turned out better.
 I added the left over strips across the middle of the backing.  The fabric is called Chelsea Boutique from Blackbird Designs, its a few years old now.  The pattern was from an Ankas Treasures book.  It turned out quite well but its not really the type of quilt I would usually make.  Can you tell I've spent too much time obsessing over this one?
The reorganising of my sewing room is coming along slowly.  I did rearrange my fabric and got rid of a few pieces.  I cleared the floor of boxes but within days they were back in there.  Quite a lot of my storage containers have crept into my very small bedroom.  I got Jack to help me get the storage boxes out from under my bed as I was sure I could move some of them out and put some of my excess fabric boxes under there.  Seventeen containers under my bed!!  And worse than that there were only about 4 I wanted to get rid of.  I'm expecting a visit from the producers of Hoarders any day now :)

My laptop is  misbehaving so I think I better stop before I lose everything.

Bye for now

Debra.