May

May is here and finally is is nice to be outside.  Our weather has gone from 40's to 70's in a matter of 2 weeks.  It's pretty nice out there.

But, I am stuck inside for a few more weeks, at least most of the working part of my day. I have client quilts to quilt off before school lets out 7 weeks from now.  Here is one of Erin's.  I get her's by the box-full.  This was actually one of the last ones, but then she needed to send me a piece of backing and decided to send 7 more in the same box!  LOL - gotta love clients that quilt that prolifically.

This is a very simple 48" panel wall-hanging that she wanted to have a custom touch to.  I quilted it with a pale gray YLI polished poly thread.  It looks kind of like a silver metallic.

 (next pic is sideways...) I added simple flowers onto each corner to bring out that shape of the flowers in the panels.  Each border and sashing is quilted, and the panels have a free-hand fill.

 Printed panels are always a little challenging as to how to quilt them, but this seems nice and effective.

This is another of last week's quilts.  These are 2-7/8" squares, so that is a hella-lot of sashing.  I spent SO many hours ditching the sashing - something like 6.  I know it sounds insane, but there are reasons why it is so slow.  Information for piecers - If you want to make a top that can be more expeditiously quilted, please be careful to have rows of sashings be as straight as possible.  Also, and probably more important, be sure that seams all press neatly in one consistent direction.  When ditch goes from one side to the other, the quilting must be slowed to keep as close to the ditch as possible. All said and done, this looks good, even if it was slow stitching.   

One challenge with quilts with small squares is what do you quilt in them?...There are 180-200 of these squares.  They really don't need excessive quilting, and in light of the cost, I didn't want to have 200 stop and starts either.  I opted to go with the orange peel design.  It is simple, clean, and fast.  Who am I kidding?...this was not fast!  I was just seeing if you were really reading this!  Orange peels are a nice pattern for a repetitive design.

 One more look-see...

 One day before I took off for Paducah, I quilted up this silk sampler. It is a sample piece in silk (please pardon my less than great piecing, as my silks are not interfaced and were very shifty).  I have stitched a bunch of fillers that will be the topic of an upcoming article.

Next time, I will show some of my finished hexagon blocks.  I have nearly 8 done now!