Some of the pinning is done but that quilt looks HUGE from the vantage point of sitting on it with a handful of pins! It will be quite a chore to quilt too, but I will do very simple quilt in the ditch. Nothing fancy on this one.

Meanwhile, I have been working on the next one and it is at the stage that I love the most. Once you have some of the squares done you start to see the secondary patterns start to emerge, or in this case the tesselations. I hope I have enough blue to finish. If I run out I will dye some fabric a darker blue and make a wide border on it. I have used up only about half of the blue so I should be all right.

Here is Cherie's quilt all ready to pin but I want to let the batt relax for awhile so I will start pinning it tomorrow.

Meanwhile I bought some fabric today to start Free's quilt. I have the first patch set together on the design board but not all sewn together yet. It is a tesselating pattern with the orange and blue blocks interlocking. It will show up better when I have more done. I will do a bit of pinning and then take a break and do some sewing.

I'm done! I finished the hand sewing on the binding this morning.

Here is the blue side.





And here is the white side.

I'm sure the white side will end up being the right side most of the time.

Now I am going to dye the backing black for Cherie's quilt and finish it before starting on Free's. It will give me time to decide on what pattern to use for his.

There was no more of the flower fabric so this is my solution. I had enough to do the white side the way I wanted to but not both sides. I still have to work on the blue squares a bit. The one heart is slanted the wrong way and they don't match as well as I want then to. Now I have to quilt the border and add the
binding.

I may redo the embroidery on the heart. I wanted to do free motion for the name but couldn't get it working. Maybe some iron on interfacing on the back. I may give it another try tomorrow. If I had some nicer fabric paint I would use that. I had some from a long time ago but there wasn't enough of the pink and the other colors were all dried out.

Here is the back with all the borders on. It definitely has become the right side. Hopefully I will be able to finish tomorrow, at least as far as the hand sewing on the binding.

Today I got all the borders on except the flowered top and bottom. I had to stop because I am about 5 inches short of fabric on two of the corners. What a drag. I hope there is more fabric like that left. If not I will put a blue or white square in each corner and maybe put hearts or something like that on them. One of them could be the label or have her name on it. I think I will be able to get more fabric though. There was quite a bit of it left and it isn't that long since I bought it. I would have had enough if I hadn't made a couple of sample pieces.
Once I get the borders on , I have to quilt them and bind them. I am hoping there is more flowered fabric because I would like to bind it with that fabric too. I don't think white would be a great color for binding and the blue wouldn't look good on the white side. I'll go to town tomorrow and have a look.

The end is in sight! Today I put the quilted blocks all together with the sashing. I still have to quilt the outside sashing to match the ones between the blocks. Then I have to put on the borders.

THis is the white side placed on the design wall with the borders in place but not sewed on. I have to study a bit on how to fit the double borders on when using this method. All this time I liked the blue side better because the quilting showed up more, but now that it is getting assembled, I prefer the white side.

Here is the blue side with the borders in place. It's nice to have a quilt that is totally reversable to change the mood of the room.

All the blocks are done now and I have to join them together. It is that time on a quilt when you finish the first stage and think you are almost done. Then you start the next stage, in this case, joining the squares, and realize that you are actually only about half done. You do start to see how it will look though, so that is encouraging. I will put a fairly wide border on, and probably a narrow blue one to separate the sashing from the border. White there is also a possibility.

Here is the last square. There was a lot of work on the background of this one but I really like the way it turned out.

Today I put some of the flower sashing on. It looks pretty good but now I have to decide whether to make it two squares by four, which is a bit long and narrow but might be better for a bed, or square. I plan to put a two inch blue border and then a wider flowered one. The long one just looks a bit too narrow. I guess I could put wider borders on the sides to even it out a bit. If I make it square I have to make one more block but that's no problem because there is one pattern in the book that I haven't used yet. It's a nice one too.
Yesterday I spent some time in the Winnipeg Centennial Library looking at quilting books. One of them had some good advice about free motion quilting that I want to try. She recommended stippling away from you and I have always worked toward myself. It makes sense that you could see where you are going better by working away. I want to try it. The last block I made is not very good anyway so I will probably re-do that one.

Here it is pinned up as a square minus one block. It's hard to decide wthout the borders on. It has been a great quilt to practise machine quilting and I have learned a lot so far.

Here is my latest block. It went fast because the background is stippled. I didn't have to spend all that time starting and stopping and sewing ends in. The stippling went much better now that I bought different thread. It only broke once and that time it could have been from pulling the fabric faster than the machine was going. Speed is crucial to good stippling. I feel I am still very much of a novice, but it is fun to do.

Now I have six blocks done. There are nine different ones in the book. I have a choice of using eight of them and making a rectangular quilt or nine to make a square one. I would like to try all the patterns so I will probably go for the square one.

I got another block done after I posted my blog yesterday. That one had stippling in the back so it took an hour instead of a day. Today I did two more and started a third. Just as I was thinking I was getting too tired, I looked on the back and one corner had curled up and was quilted that way so I quit and will have to start tomorrow with some ripping out. Not the best way to start, but I am just too tired today.














This is how it looks before the ends are sewn in. The best advice I got about that is using a self threading needle. Cuts the time in half because I can hardly see the eye to start with and with the self therading ones you can sew in two or three threads together. This is the one that unfortunately needs to have three or four lines ripped out. Ces't la vie.

This one took me all day. There was a LOT of starting and stopping on the background but I am quite pleased with the result. I need to practise the stippling more but what better place to practise than on a quilt! I love the effect of stippling and now that I know about the halfway setting on my presser foot it goes really well. Speed and control are what I am working on now.

I got fabric for the sashing and I quite like it, although the pink check is very nice too. Unfortunately, I don't have enough of the check. I want to make a wide matching border so I will need quite a lot of it.

I thought I would prefer the white side, but now I think the blue side is better. The quilting pattern shows up better.

Well, between New Years Parties and entertaining granddaughters I haven't done much quilting. We did some Batik and silk painting though and I learned how to make cables and feathers without a pattern. I borrowed a book from the library called Quilting with Style by Gwen Marsdon and Joe Cunningham and in it they explain in very clear terms how to do your own marking without a template. Maybe on my next border. They are mostly interested in hand quilting and I prefer machine. That's why I am so impressed with this book.

I have decided to start Sacha's quilt using the patterns in this book. I will do only quilting and no piecework. That's a first for me. I plan to do one side in gray blue and the other side in white muslin with white thread on both sides. On the white side I will use pink or blue floral for the sashing and matching on the blue side. Each square will showcase a different pattern. They are fun to do and don't take very long with the machine.

I had a lot of problems with the stipple pattern on the second one. I think it is poor quality thread so I will invest in different thread tomorrow. I have solved the mystery of why I couldn't get the free-motion foot to work before though. I didn't realize that there is a halfway position on the presser foot for doing that. It makes all the difference in the world. I have a Pfaff quilitng machine and I love it but still have a lot to learn on it.

Hopefully it will be a great quilt that will look as good on both sides so that she can change the mood of her room by flipping over the quilt. The pink sashing is just pinned on to see how it would look but I think I will look for some pastel floral rather than the checks.