Welcome to my blog

Please don't remind me that I'm poor; I'm having too much fun pretending I'm simply "living green" like everyone else these days.


Pages

Friday, March 19, 2010

The last few days

I know it's been a few days since I posted on this blog.  I was learning new things about blogger.  My hope it to make the other blog easier to find patterns and tips.  My goal is to start putting together instructions for creating cardboard furniture and backwards quilt piecing and have everything easy to find if the reader wants to give them a try. 

I'm the type person who plans things well in advance of when I actually do them.  Now that it looks like my daughter will be moving soon, I'm getting myself set up to go, go, go on projects that I've put on hold while she's here.  She put an offer on a house and we are waiting to see if it's accepted.  If the offer is accepted then the rest of the stuff starts.  Mortgage application, inspections, title searches, and stuff like that. 

My brother's grand daughter had her baby.  She had toximia and had been in the hospital for a few days.  The baby had to be delivered a month early because her blood pressure wouldn't go down. 

Yes, I have done some quilting when I could.  This quilt is finished. 




I stitched in the ditch around all the fire engines and meandered the background with mono thread so that the stitching design didn't distract from the focus of the quilt.





I did a loop design  on the sashing.  Again, so it would not be distracting.




Of course, there are the fire hydrants on the border.



I had the next quilt on the machine getting it stabelized when I saw this.  Duh!  I had forgotten the owner asked me to fix this before quilting it. 




Took it off the machine to fix before doing the rest of the stabelizing.  Things like this are one of the reasons I love the zipper leaders.




I can fix areas and put it back onto the machine to continue quilting with few problems.




It's now back on the machine.  See, all fixed.  Her thread was thinner than mine but it's hardly noticeable.




Today is going to be another busy day.  I'm going to see the new baby and Mommie as well as get some things done while I'm out.

3 comments:

lw said...

I love how the fire trucks came out. Good save on the other quilt with the forgotten cottage stitching.

I tried using white thread in the needle and dark blue in the bobbin and I'm glad I used a muslin test quilt, because it looked horrible. No combination of tensions fixed it, either. And the quilt is one of my 20 year old never finished (it was basted but never quilted.) It has a lot of issues with the bias fabrics stretching like the "issue" quilt you had on the blogs earlier. I think the back may look better than the front, sadly, but I'm not giving up. I'm just using your suggestion to do medium, open meandering type quilting.

Anita Estes said...

Hmmm.... when you use high contrast threads like a light and a dark you will get contrast. Next time (on a practice muslin) try using two shades of the same color. For example (not necessarily for your quilt) a light blue thread with a medium blue thread or a medium green with a dark green. Go only two or three degrees on color change.

When I first started quilting, I could afford only one spool of each color thread. I have an on board bobbin winder so I really needed two spools. Using two spools of the same color but only a couple of degree different meant I could have more colors. I used the color that looked best on the top and the contrast color on the back. I hope I explained that so it's understandable.

Sometimes I use a color thread that at first glance seems totally unrelated to the quilt. Like an orange on a brown top. Or a green on a blue top.

The colors of the thread are very intense when on the spool. I pull off a couple of yards and lay it on the top like it would be when stitched. The color doesn't look nearly as intense when it's not concentrated.

Hmm... done is always good! Even a quilt with issues is better when quilted so it can be loved and used. You'd be surprised at how different an issue quilt looks after it comes off the machine. People don't notice the issues anymore. They see a complete quilt. Why? Because you are looking at the quilt from a foot away but everyone else will see it from a distance. Make sense?

lw said...

I'll try coming up a couple of degrees in intensity. I never thought about laying the thread on the top to audition it, but that's a great tip. Thanks!