Duvet Cover

Here is a rather poor photo of the duvet cover. It's pretty simple but very comfortable. The back is the flat sheet of the set we bought recently. I didn't line it at all but serged all the seams after they were pieced together. Hopefully, it will hold up to repeated washing.

I have been working away at the quilting frame. It is good to go except for the stitch regulator. It is a Grace Sure Stitch and the instruction booklet doesn't explain at all how to put it on the Inspira frame. Since it was sold as a package deal, I have to assume that they are compatible. I'll have to call the dealer that sold it to me I guess.

I put the borders or the newest quilt and now realize the benefit of the Pfaff built-in walking foot. I used the new machine that doesn't have one and the borders ended up shorter than the quilt resulting in a big puff when I put it up on the design wall. I'll be taking them off and re-doing them using my other machine.

Duvet Cover

Simba thanks everyone for their good wishes. He thinks they have speeded up his recovery. He's still limping but looks a lot happier so it's only a matter of time. We had him weighed at the vet's and he now weighs 90 pounds of pure muscle.

I have started working on a duvet cover and have most of the middle done. I thought I'd put it together to see how it would look and then add more rows if I needed to. Big mistake. Because of the way the stars are made the little triangles have to be sewn on before the sashing is put in. I spent a couple of hours ripping out and adding triangles but that is all done now. My current problem is that I need some borders to make it big enough and I have no more of the blue with moon and stars and no more of the brown used in the sashing. I may look tomorrow on the off chance that there is still some of the blue at Fabricland. I think that's where I bought it but it was a long time ago so I don't have much hope. I could do a piano key border with all the colors of the stars or multiple borders using the star colors. Or I could add a new color altogether. Once I get the rest of the rows attached I'll do some fabric auditioning.

Minneapolis

This weekend we went to Minneapolis for their Uptown Art Fair which is held outside at three different locations. It was well worth the eight hour drive. We saw lots of pottery, jewelery, leather and coth bags, silk paintings, oil paintings, hand-made furniture and on and on. It was most enjoyable in spite of a drizzly rain on Saturday. I was happy that it wasn't too hot. We were a bit aprehensive about the traffic situation because of the bridge collapse but we didn't have to cross the river at all to get to the Fair so it was no problem. We even got lucky with the parking. On Saturday we got the last spot in a lot right beside the fair and on Sunday we went very early and were also able to get into a lot near Loring Park where that part of the fair was. We didn' t take any pictures of the fair itself. We were too busy looking at all the goodies.

Of course, you can't take a full day's drive without visiting at least one quilt shop. We found one in Fergus Falls and I bought the fabric you see above. They had a nice selection of black and whites so I got some fat quarters. I'm sure I will regret not getting more. I love the green batik with the turtles on it. The fat quarters on the left were on sale so I couldn't resist. I have more fabric in similar colors in my stash so they should come in handy.


We stopped at a Dick Blick art store but it wasn't going to open for another fifteen minutes. As fate would have it, there was a Joanne's right next door that was open. I found a machine quilting book that I have seen online and wanted for quite some time. The book about landscape quilts was from the store in Fergus Falls.

On the way home quilting stores were out of the question because they are seldom open on Sunday in this part of the country. We did stop at Albertville outlet mall and bought some new sheets for our bed and some towels. I have a down comforter that I love and I think I will take the top sheet for a duvet cover. I was thinking of piecing a top for it. My question is, do I line the top so all the seams don't show? If I do it will it be too heavy? If I line it do I quilt it without batting? Maybe I could quilt a very simple pattern using the serger. The serger would work well with K. Alexander's Stack a Deck technique if I do something a bit wonky. It's hard to get an exact seam with the serger but it does finish all the raw edges very nicely.