Lowell Quilt Festival 2012

Yesterday, I was able to attend the Lowell Quilt Festival.  Until a client of mine entered a quilt there a year ago, I didn't even know about it.  It is not a huge show, having about 80 competing quilts.  The caliber of the quilts, however, is generally high.  In addition to the judged quilts, there were a couple of special exhibits - one by the wonderful Pat Delaney, a MA-based machine quilter.  She brought about a dozen of her show quilts, most of which have a bucket of ribbons.

The main part of this show is at the Lowell Memorial Auditoriom.  While it is a pretty venue for the show, it has dismal lighting and very limited space for vendors.  What Lowell that does do that is unique is that they have 6-8 other locations throughout the town that have quilts on display as well, including the New England Quilt Museum.  A free shuttle bus can take you around to the various venues.

I learned early in the week how my quilts did.  It was hard not blasting it to the world, but I went to the show again with my mother and wanted to preserve a small surprise.  I was aware that Rainbow Nouveau had made their "big stage", but was delighted to see that Sea Glass was there too.  It is just SO much prettier with the better lighting, that only the stage has.  Here's a glimpse at the show's winners as seen from the stage...

Patricia Washburn's quilt (with a very long name!...My Mind: All Skewed Up Without Zentangle Meditation, a overall workmanship award), Space Crystal by Alice Means (HM), my Sea Glass (3rd Mixed Wall quilts)

Standiford Star by Herbert Menzel who repeated an 1800's quilt design received both 1st place in the Pieced Bed quilt category and exemplary piecing awards.  The next one is Redbud Ramble by none other than Linda Roy.  She earned 2nd in the Mixed Bed quilt category and the Exemplary Applique award.  More on this in a moment.

The next one I have seen before in magazines.  Megan Farkas' Sakura I: Hanaogi Views the Cherry Blossoms took first in the Mixed wall category.  It's a lovely hand done quilt.  I have a closeup in a moment. You all recognize the next one.  Yup, my Rainbow Nouveau..my naughty stepchild from earlier this summer.  Good news, this one has learned to behave, and rather nicely I should add.  Completely to my utter surprise, this baby took 1st in it's Mixed Bed quilt category as well as Best of Show.  Flabergasted!  Seeing it hanging on the stage, it is starting to grow on me.

Going into the corner is one I unfortunately cannot identify.  It hangs beautifully though.  The colorful quilt is Cetena by Timna Tar, a person often receiving awards for good use of color.  It also earned 2nd in the pieced wall quilt division, despite having a whole lotta appliqued circles on it.  Seems like a Mixed quilt to me.  Lastly, Homage to Spring by Susan Ziel (HM in mixed wall).

Now, how about some close up...

 

This quilt is truly gorgeous, from the background that softly grades from green to purple, to the delicate detailing on the applique.  It is hand appliqued (and if you know me, you know that that's my preference).  It is also hand quilted, which I also love.

Every applique piece is outlined with black embroidery thread, giving them exceptional visibility.  It's a trick I will have to stick into my bag of tricks to use someday.  The background quilting, though it is all the same for the entire 60"x90" piece, is period appropriate and effective. 

Linda Roy's quilts never disappoint.  I have seen 3-4 other quilts of her's in the past couple years, and am always amazed.  They are often appliqued, heavily, and hand quilted to the heavens and back.  Last year, she took Best of Show with her Vintage Button Bouquet.  And if I were a judge, this probably would have won this year.  Guess it's a good thing for me that I haven't been appointed a judge yet!

 

Like myself, she likes stitching circles (a LOT!) - there must be 750 of the little pink buggers on this!

The one thing that still gives me the shivvers, and has since the list of show winners was published Wednesday is that my quilt scored higher than this quilt.  How in the Earth?  What didn't she do, that I must have done?  I am so in awe of what this woman creates.  She's such a masterful artist.  I just wish the judges comments could tell me what the fine dividing line between her's and mine was.  I will forever be elated and grateful for what Rainbow Nouveau is accomplishing and earning, but deep inside me, I need to understand.  I know...I am nuts.  I operate on being rational and logical, and having the understanding helps me to do the right things on future quilts.

A few last closeups...

 This next one is hand quilted, and is quite lovely up close.

And just so you could see this one, I pulled my picture fromVQF (the one from Lowell was dreadfully blurry).  The color progressions are nice.

I'll do another post later this week of other show quilts, a couple of the special venue shows including the Boston Modern Quilt Guild's show which was nice.  I had the great opportunity of meeting a very good client who I have only known through the quilts she's mailed me.  I also had a client from the Boston area that put a quilt I quilted into the show (a surprise until I stumbled upon it!).

If you're within a few hours of Lowell, this is a nice show (despite picking up my quilts just after the monsoon rains started!)

Lightening Strikes Twice

You always hear that lightening never strikes the same spot twice.  I know that this is only a saying, but it does seem that to get a really good thing to happen a second time is harder than getting it to happen once - if only because the psychology of the human mind gets involved the 2nd time.  Humor me & read on...

I have been athletic all of my life.  As a young girl and teenager, I was a competitive gymnast.  I was pretty good, and I really worked hard to be successful.  I took this nearly to the point of being superstitious.  I'd save all the green m&m's (yea, this tradition was started before the connotation we know of came around for green m&m's) from every package.  There would be a baggie in the freezer of all my m&m's, and I'd take this to gymnastics meets for good luck.  Somehow, I struggled with consistency, and the candy supposedly helped.  As a result, I kind of expected that if I'd done really good at one meet, the next one might be a dog meet.

The competitive nature continued throughout high school with musical endeavors, and into my adult life when I decided to try my hand at competitive adult figure skating.  I always tackled things head-on, and with an intention of succeeding.  Or winning.  I'm not one of those people that loses gracefully.  Or happily.  I am a firm believer that I control my own destiny.  If better people beat me, and I did my best, it's one thing.  But if I goofed something up, and could have controlled that, then I get upset.

So how does this relate to anything??  My quilting career has taken off like a rocket.  I purchased my longarm less than 3 years ago.  I quilted client quilts a month later.  A magazine contacted me for quilt photos after 3 months.   I entered my first quilt show after 6 months, and won Rookie of the Year.  At 11 months, I was selected by HandiQuilter to be part of their 2011 advertising.  It was moving and moving fast.  I was surprised, but the roller-coaster was fast, and flying towards success.  I didn't want to slow down long enough to blink for fear I'd see the progress decline.  A year ago, as I had done for the previous couple years, I entered 2 quilts in the Maine Quilt Show.  It's a decent, smaller show.  It lacks a lot of higher end quilting that you'll see at machine quilting shows, but is still generally well represented by hand and machine quilters alike.  When I arrived to the show last year, I stood in shock to see my quilt hanging with the Best of Judged ribbon.  It still strikes me as shocking that I have already received a best of show award.  I haven't put in my decade of dues yet.   It was a strong wake up call that my quilting is good.

It was also a scary thing, because all last fall I wondered how on earth I'd ever make anything that could top that for this year.  Winning once was easy.  I never thought about it, in fact.  It just happened.  But repeating it would be hard.  Nobody wants to go back the following year without a quilt capable of knocking the judge's socks off.  At least, I certainly didn't.

The quilt I had been working on, and intended to enter in this show, was giving me absolute fits.  First off, I had horrendous tension problems with the Glide thread on the batik fabric that I had to rip out a huge section.  I then opted to stitch with a gold Glide because the gold bobbin would blend with the backing fabric, disguising any tension problems.  The problem was that I hated how this looked on the front.  It was not in my "plan".  The general quilting went pretty well.  I found one small pleat on the back because of how I chose to quilt (SID all first, then go back and fill - places on the quilt were hard to keep smooth and taught during quilting).  I conceived a long and skinny label to cover that.  Creative or Ingenious??  You be the judge!  Then it was done quilting and onto the blocking boards.  Then the shit hit the fan.  OMG, there was bleeding.  It was horrible.  Areas of the ivory fabrics looked bruised.  I didn't want to say that the freaking quilt was jinxed, but it sure seemed that way.  I contacted another fellow quilter that helped me with the dye release.  It took about 4 days and 100 Shout color catchers.  But when I was done, I had another problem.  Some of the pins I used to secure the color catchers in the wash cycle had left a rust spot on the quilt.  This was maybe 15-20 1-2mm rust spots onthe front and back -- and not in locations where I'd conveniently place a crystal!  I tried washing it again with a rust detergent.  The problem is that all the washing I did on the quilt, and all the use of detergents, color catchers, etc had taken it's toll on the quilt's brightness and fullness.  It just seemed thin and limp, not having the nice loft it had the day I took it off the frame.  And the bold batiks had visibly faded.  Perhaps nobody else but me would realize it was a shadow of it's former, unwashed self.  But I knew.  And I was heart-broken.

I opted to finish the beast anyways.  I got out the crystals to discover that the ones sent to me were not hot fix!  Another sign, or so it seemed.  I waited a week, and Dreamtime kindly returned the wrong crystals for the type I needed.  I did the hand painting, as planned -- not originally, but after seeing the gold Glide thread on the gray triangles, I decided I'd paint the vinework to better blend it in.  I don't think I really believed that, but at that point I was just going through the motions in a feeble attempt to finish this quilt.  In fact, the picture below is the only thing I can find that shows any of the painting!  

I continued on and added what seemed like an ingenious variagated piped binding.  I did post about that here.  I used about 60-8" segments of graded color around the binding.  It looked pretty cool.  Correction: It looks freaking awesome.  But I still had reservations about sending this quilt to the Maine Show for fear it flopped.  All signs with the multitude of issues I'd had were that it would flop.  I didn't want to go into the show and have egg on my face.  I don't have the Tara Lipinski mindset (remember her as the one-time wonder, who won the olympics in 1998, and then retired before she could ever compete again.  I don't think she wanted to not be able to repeat her performance).  Anyway, I have digressed there.  I don't give up.  I tackle things strongly, and would prefer to go down in a blazing ball of fire than to run the other way.  But, I really don't want to go down in a blaze of fire anyway.  So...

Tentatively, I entered (OK, the real truth...I entered the quilt before it had ever been quilted, and before it had any problems!!)   my new problem quilt, named Rainbow Nouveau, on account of all of it's many colors.  I also entered my Sea Glass quilt.  I think that this will have nice appeal with people considering the show is in Maine.  Very (VERY!!) much to my surprise, my client and friend Kathleen called last night from the show preview.  She said that Rainbow Nouveau had won the Best of Judged.  I was shocked.  More than shocked - I think I had a cardiac moment.  I was starting to think that the judges had a mental lapse, when she told me that the two judges were there with her and wanted to talk to me.  Oh holy freak out on my end, are you kidding?  They were very nice and had fabulous things to say.  If only I had the where with all to ask them a real question or two about what they really thought!  Oh Lordy, thank you for them not having enough time to discover where the garbage tension is, and where the rust spots and remaining dye bleeds are.  My theory seemed to work - With enough to look at, the eye will wander continuously, and it won't be possible to find all the bloopers!  I am elated and surprised that lightening did strike twice.  I have found such tremendous fortune and success and pleasure with quilting.  And the hard work and perseverance is rewarded and recognized sometimes too.  I will indeed take some close-ups of the quilt on Sunday, since I don't have any!  This is the one my friend emailed this morning.  I warned you this was a busy beast!

Oh, and Sea Glass took a 1st place too.

The end.  The show is this weekend at the Augusta Civic Center.

Variegated Piping/Binding done!

Happy Memorial Day to you.  It's started off horribly here.  All 5 us us seem to have gotten a nasty head cold at the same time.  Normally it comes in waves, but everyone started feeling rotten yesterday.  My oldest is marching in a parade today, and we all have to go stand and watch later.  He's trying every ounce of patience we have (and anybody that knows me knows I have none to begin with).  Nothing like starting a gorgeous day off horribly when he refuses to walk 2 blocks with me to where he's supposed to be meeting the band.  Completely refused.  Made me drive him.

I finished the last stitches on the binding last night.  Looks OK - good enough that I won't redo any sections like I usually do.  I think I really prefer bias binding; it goes on looking better.  Good lessons learned.  I did my usual piped binding.  The piping adds a bit of structural rigidity to the edge of the quilt, and it is pretty.  In keeping with the freakishly loud and bold colors of this quilt, my piping is made from 50 or so 7" pieces of the batiks used in the quilt, creating a graduated rainbow effect around the quilt.  Here's the piping in a roll so you can see all the colors...

The piping is stitched so that the color of the piping is different from the HST's and the ribbons of the outer border.  It's completely colorful. 

Here are a few corner shots...As you can probably see, I hace done just a touch of painting on this quilt to bring out some of the quilting details.

I need to hand stitch a sleeve, and send fabric off to a bloggy friend who is making me a label.  There are a few crystals still to stick on, and a few rust spots to hopefully cover.  I'm losing interest in the quilt quickly on account of all the problems it caused in the last month.  I'm not entirely thrilled with how the Glide thread has tensioned in some places, but it is too late to fret too much about that.  I'll probably just keep it for shows that are not exclusively for machine quilting.  The creativity, piecing, and applique ought to gain me plenty of points.

If you are in New England, the first show it will go to is my home state show - The Maine Quilt show in late July.  Since I won best of show there last year, I really want to send a good quilt.  Though I think this had the potential for doing well, I'm not loving it as of late.  Now, I am just glad to have it nearly finished.  I'm also planning to send it to the Lowell Quilt Festival - so if you are in this area, you can see it and give me your impressions.

When a Quilt Bleeds, What Do You Do?

I have already done the first few things that pop into my mind of what to do when your quilt has bled...scream, hunt for chocolate.  There was none.  I went for a glass of wine.  It took the edge off, but I needed to address this problem quickly.  Afterall, paperwork for this quilt has already been sent in to a couple of shows.

Three days ago, I cleared space in my basement to block my 80" quilt, which is just a hair too big to block upstairs in my bedroom (the usual place).  It requires moving my bed too close to the door, making the room uncomfortable.  Truth be told, my husband came to bed late one night when I had a previous quilt on the blocking boards.  Maybe he forgot I had moved the bed, who knows.  But he claims to have near walked straight into the bed upon entering the room.  Either way, even with an 18' long room, it is oddly cramped with an 80" quilt on the floor.  So...All set up downstairs.  As soon as my daughter got on the bus Monday, I happily scooted off to wet my quilt and get it blocking.

Here it is (above) all wet.  Dontcha just love the texture that shows?!...That was the last moment I was really happy this week.  Unless, if you consider the fact that I got the quilt all pinned on the blocking board, and did in fact discover it is a full 80" long (I had measured more like 78-79") - Being 80" makes it qualify for the bed quilt category, which is what I have wanted all along.  Anyways, I am digressing.  On Monday evening I checked on the quilt.  It was very wet still and I was seeing something I really hate to see - staining of color on the light background.  Normally I'd worry about the reds and deep plums, but the staining was all coming from aqua/teal materials.  The Hoffman 1895 hand-dyes I use so often are fantastic and do not bleed, but every now and then I toss another batik into the quilt, as I have done here.  Damn. Damn.  Damn.

 See...closeup of the mess.  It ran through to the backing in some places too.

Yuck.  I immediately sent off an email to the first person that I thought of - Vicki Welsh, Queen of Hand-dyes.  I knew she'd have some good advice.  I had a quilt last year (the one with all the tiny appliqued grapes) bleed, but it was small enough to wash in the washer with a bunch of color catchers hand stitched over the grapes.  It came out fine.  This quilt is big, and I did a cardinal sin - I trimmed the edge and had cut through the stitching,  I feared that the stitches would unravel in a wash cycle, even though I did put a row of tight stitching around the perimeter.  The washing machine is just not a possibility before it is bound.

 Stupid dots.  Stupid teal bleeding fabric.  UGH.  And I can't believe that is blue and green on the backside!

OK, so Vicki's advice is to soak it in a tub, submerged for 12+ hours with 1/2 to 1C of dish detergent (She uses Synthrapol, but thought the detergent would work the same).  Start with water that is as hot as possible.  She says 140F, but I measured mine to be 126F (I am an engineer.  Ya didn't think I'd pass on measuring the temp did you?!).  I added 3 large pots full of boiling water, which is no easy feat since the jacuzzi where the quilt is bathing is upstairs.  The quilt is weighted down too to keep it submerged.  For good measure, I also tossed in the last 6 Shout color catchers I had.  I should say also that I have checked 3 stores locally and cannot find Synthrapol.  Panic was beginning to set in.  I came back 10 hours later to see how things looked.

The 6 color catchers show tinges of aqua, but the staining is not gone.  Some places are better, but it is showing in other new places too.  I ought to add, it is hard when the light fabrics are wet to identify staining versus seeing the brighter colored seam allowance underneath the cream fabric.  But I know my feathered star was not constructed with "bruise" colored material.  Yesterday evening we picked up another package of color catchers (these were odd, with a detergent in a pouch) and another stain stick.  I have already gone through 1 stain stick.  I liberally coated the spots again and filled up the tub to soak it again overnight, throwing in all 10 of the oxy-clean color catchers.  If one is good, ten must be better.

This morning, after 22 hours of soaking, it is not normal yet.  I am getting mad.  And nowhere near here has Synthrapol.  Sophie and I ventured out to get more supplies.  I'm not messing around this time.  What fool only uses 6 color catchers?  These are the 24 pack of color catchers that I had used last year with success.

I pretreated every stain location on the front and back with the Shout stuff.  Probably used over half a bottle.  I then attached all 96 color catchers to the colored areas of the quilt or anywhere that had evidence of bleeding.  It appears to be complete and utter overkill times 10, but I am just sick of dealing with this.  I started hand stitching them on, but wet quilt is hard to stitch through.  I used pins for most of them.  Will have to be super careful handling the quilt tomorrow.  Blood would be harder to remove.

I then folded this monster up, loaded the tub for a 3rd time with hot soapy water, and proceeded to hope for the best.  Oh, and for good measure, I did pick up a $3 bottle of ReTayne at Joann's for future quilts.  They didn't have the Synthrapol though.  The blue hue in the tub is the laundry detergent.  Funny, because I have shelled out $37 for 5 boxes of color catchers and 3 stain sticks!

I have checked it half a dozen times since I stuck it (with it's 96 color catchers) back into the tub.  I even ran the jacuzzi pump a couple times to generate a little turbulence and bubbles.  Not sure why.  Maybe the white noise of the pump is soothing.  Maybe I have really lost my mind.  Now, I guess I will just go about my day and check it at bedtime.  As they say, the watch pop never boils.  Whatever happens, I gotta think that whatever dye is coming out of the quilt, it will have released all it is released in 44 hours.  So for better or worse, tomorrow it goes to the blocking boards.  Cross your fingers for a positive outcome and stay tuned.

If ANYBODY else has any other advice, should the staining not be gone, please speak up.  I'd love to hear from you.  And I know, prewash. Prewash, and prewash again.  Can't you tell I'm not a prewasher??? I will be.

Regular Programming Resumes

It's back to client quilts for me.  I am out of MQX posts, unless you want to hear about my awesome classes.  I may hold onto that post for when I have nothing whatsoever interesting to say.

I will be getting back to quilting my client's quilts starting tomorrow.  Or maybe I will take one day to clean my studio first, as it is about to implode from threads.  I took my quilt off the frame, thinking it was mostly finished.  Of course, I have noticed one 1" line of stitching not done.  It always works that way.  Maybe I will just try to fix it on the domestic.  Anywho...here are a few pictures of the back of the quilt I just nearly finished.  The pictures don't do it justice.  The backing is a soft butter-yellow, and shows off the quilting really well.

 This is the center.  I was not really satisfied with what I did on the center star.  I quilted something densely, then picked it out, then hated what it did to the fabric (lotsa little prick holes).  I suspect they'll go away when it gets wet, but I just couldn't come up with something to stitch that I liked.

The wildness of the outer border is very evident with the quilting finished.  It was a complete pain in the backside because of all the stop and starts.  I guess I knew that going into it, so I shouldn't be whining.  I have a few things to do still...fix the missing stitches, block the beast, bind it, do a little hand painting in gold, and add a couple thousand crystals.  It's all doable before mid-July.  I think.  This is closer than I generally cut it in terms of time, because I am notoriously slow, especially when those kiddies are out of school in (as my daughter tells me daily) about 35 days.

If you want to see the finished pictures of this quilt, you'll have to come back in late July or visit the Maine Quilt Show.  I am hoping to also enter this at the Lowell Quilt Festival.  I had to get it off the longarm in order to take a picture to send them though!

One last day

This morning was full of pre-trip chores...go to the grocery and the bank, do 2 loads of wash, locate a suitcase, finish the dreaded taxes...entertain the 5 year old, etc. Nothing all that fun here, mind you, but they all had to get done before tomorrow.

With my long awaited departure tomorrow for MQX in Providence, I have this one last day to finish off a little bit of the quilting on this quilt. The 52" center section is done, as is half of the 2" purple border. I stitched it this morning, but quickly ran out of stitchable border because the rogue-tension cranberry thread had not been ripped out yet. Sadly, after I prepared all my stuff to take to my MQX classes, I rip-rip-ripped for over an hour. At this juncture, it is nearly done, and I may stitch the remainder of the border first thing in the morning (then again, I may just stay in bed!). I have two borders (one is 2" and the other is the ~7" applique border) left to quilt. Both are designed, but will probably take quite a bit of time (on account of all the applique). I have client quilts awaiting me, so I need to get finished up after I return this week.

I love how it is turning out. It's different, for sure. The backside of the quilt is textural, appearing to have all matching bobbin thread. I have used gold, white and beige bobbins, none of which really appear different in color from the backing fabric. I finally ventured out a little, and stitched the pebbles (below) in the gold thread. It is only different enough to set off that frame slightly.

See you when I return Friday-

Progressing right along

I've stopped keeping track of my hours on this quilt...MANY. I quilt about 3-4 hours a day. The 52" ivory central part of this quilt is now down to the micro-fillers to be called done. OK, there are 2 sections that have to be ripped out on account of Sunday/Monday's bad adventures with mistensioning, but I may do that when it is off the frame, where I can get comfortable. It's gonna take a few dozen hours! Yesterday, I started the curved-crosshatching of these 20" feathered stars. I was a little uncertain right off the bat if the hatching density seemed dense enough, considering the fact that I have quilted the rest of the quilt to within an inch of it's life.

After I finished the center part of the stars today, I have decided that the very traditional stars are just fine. They stand out in part because they are less dense. I may checkerboard-fill the CChatching later with silk, but for now this is it. All 4 of the center feathered wreaths came out good, considering they are completely freehanded.

The four corners of the quilt are also now finished. I will likely come back after the quilt is blocked and paint the swirly vine to make it more prominent. The texture is simply amazing from the back of the quilt. I can hardly wait to have it off the frame to see the back!

The view from below...but the texture is lost. It's kind of like a stained glass window.

And lastly, I ended to day going back to the back-filling. I don't think this will take forever, but I have not really been the best judge of time thus far. We'll see!

So, my question to you is this: Are you going to MQX next week???

Never Again

Never again. I mean it this time. I have been good on my last couple of quilts about choosing a mottled or sort of busy print for the backing, but I got stupid this time. Never again. This quilt has a tan batik backing, despite my knowing that I was planning to use some colored threads. I always love seeing other people's quilts that have colored stitching showing. Why on earth did I think that I needed to be that crazy?

You see, it all started so well. I spent nearly 10 hours ditch quilting this with monolon. The tension was near perfect. My stitching was as good as I could have asked for. Then I switched to a cream colored Glide, and began the larger motifs -- the feather sprays and the cross-hatching at the quilt's center.

Seriously, in 12 hours of quilting, I only had one area that I knew I planned to rip out and "fix". It was going as well as could be expected, considering it is an 80" square quilt.

Then things started to unravel. Last night, I decided to do some of the ivory dense background filler. There was no change of thread or bobbin, or anything that should make the tension go whacky. I stitched 4-5 sections of the ivory background, then had a look to find that the last one really needed an adjustment. It didn't look good on the back. Sadly, looking really good on the front left me just feeling frustrated. This is about the densest filler I have ever stitched. It will likely take 3 hours to remove that 6" triangle, it is THAT dense.

I was upset last night, but trying to formulate a plan of attack for today. Clearly my plan of attack consisted of more foolishness and time-wasting efforts. Right off, at 6am I started on the squares on poing along that dark plum border. This is stitched with a cranberry thread. I rechecked the tension and went at it. As you can see, it really looks pretty good. On the front, anyways. Once again, my bubble was burst with a sledgehammer. The backside to my surprise, had a ton of little ticks showing. UGGGHHH! The straight line work looked really good, but the filler is where it all fell apart. For some reason, the Glide thread needs the bobbin tension to be freakishly loose. As much as I hate it, I will probably rip it all out and restitch it, and not in the cranberry thread as I want. I will choose a thread that will blend with the quilt's backing, should the tension wobble again.

Then there was the call from my son at 1:30. He (cough, cough) thought he was not feeling well, and needed to be picked up. Well, he's just fine, and I needed that extra hour to get myself unwound and productive again. I am frazzled right now. I have nearly 2 weeks this month that I won't get much quilting at all done, and this quilt is supposed to be done, blocked and bound for a show mid-July. The thoughts of pulling it out are seriously crossing my mind. I don't want it to come to that.

After we got back home, I resolved that I have the ability to use shades of thread from white to cream to light gold, none of which need a highly contrasting bobbin. The back will still show the quilting, it just won't show the stitching in color. Downside: I cannot match colors to the front unless they fall into those shades. So, I quilted the gray background of one of these large star corners, using a Khaki (really looks like shiny gold) thread. I think it looks pretty good, though I now have to outline the blocks with this khaki thread to clean up where all the "bananas" meet the edges.

Another look...

I hate spending 125 hours hand appliqueing a quilt top only to have to make sacrifices on the quilting that were not in my initial plan. It just makes me neurotic!@

Treading Water

We are getting our 2nd snow day (that results in a school cancellation...we've had a few more snowy days than that, but not many) of the season. Kids are home, as predicted. You all know my thoughts on kids home, so I won't digress too much there. I have been treading water sort of this week. I quilted on the monster quilt (see previous posts) until Monday morning, when I ran out of the prewound bobbins. I was anticipating this...the order I placed last week did not arrive until yesterday at 5pm. Sigh... Though I'd like to have been finishing the 115" CW quilt, the extra 2 days did allow me to putter with a few other things. I have given my left wrist a nice rest and today I realized for the first time that it was not bothering me. Thank Goodness. Aleve and a wrist brace to the rescue.
I got the binding on my MQX Neutral Fusion quilt this week. I also got this very bright quilt marked up for quilting, or I should say I started the markings. On Wednesday, I marked all 4 of these gray corners with this pretty cool braid stencil that I made myself back when I hand quilted. The green marking pencil marks are there, but appear a bit faint. But then yesterday, I decided that the braid was far too traditional looking for this quilt, and erased all the marks and did this...

It has a more art nouveau look, which is where I am going, and is much more how I envisioned it to look. I am now fine-tuning what is going in those star points, and contemplating thread color(s), as I will likely purchase some Glide at MQX for the quilt. With all these colors, I really don't know what color to stitch, but I do know I don't want to change the thread 12 different times! If you have a moment...have a look at the outer border of the quilt...it requires opening the link to see the entire top. I need suggestions on what to do with the quilting for the outer border. I am stumped!