Monday, February 27, 2012

Two finishes this weekend.

The first is my long-anticipated (by me) crib quilt for my sister's new baby daughter Addie.  I think I started this quilt in mid-November, working on it bit by bit until it was ready for quilting a few weeks ago.  I encountered a frustrating problem of my machine skipping stitches, and thought I had made a complete and thorough mess of the quilt- ready to throw in the towel.




 

These are actually not the worst of it- it got a lot uglier, but I will spare you the horror!  A few readers gave me some advice which alleviated the problem somewhat, but I still wasn't getting a consistent stitch.  Anyhow, when my wife's good friend came to visit a couple of weeks ago, she connected me with her mom, who's best friend is a quilter, and she suggested I try using a Stretch needle instead of a Quilting needle in my machine.  Magic!  Not a single problem after installing the Stretch needle- Thanks Sandy!!!

So I went back and ripped out many many stitches on the quilt and re-quilted maybe 25 stretches of quilting.  I didn't have the patience to re-stitch EVERY skip, and the re-quilting stitches aren't perfect, but at least they don't skip now :)



I took this Whirlygig to the local playground for a few late afternoon pictures.  It was really windy yesterday, so those pinwheels were really blowing in the breeze!

 

Here you can see some of the quilting, which was larger-scale.  I wanted to maximize the softness, and many suggested that tighter quilting can sometimes compromise the quilt's cuddly feeling.





I did a pieced binding using some of the leftover fabrics, and machine bound it, as I have on my last few quilts.  Perhaps just laziness, but I like to think that I am anxious to get it to its new owner as soon as possible. :)  In either case, I like the look, and that's time I could be working on my next project!

This next one barely counts.  I did some FMQ practice on a quilt sandwich while I was in the doldrums of FMQ problems on the above quilt, and decided it came out pretty well, so I bound it and made a little doll quilt/blanket for by daughter's doll.


The batting is "pieced"- I took 4 strips of scraps and used it for my practice sandwich.  You can see the seams running lengthwise ( I guess if I do that in the future, I will stitch the pieces together).  Really, only the binding is pieced, but my daughter doesn't seem to mind :)

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