Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Moonlight and Strings

This is Winter Moonlight hanging on the wall in the library and though I still need practice quilting, piecing, and making letters, I like it.  And since my goal was to get it completed by this Friday, I made the goal, but it took many, many, many hours over the holidays to get it quilted. 








This is a spiderweb styled string quilt.  I started it on Sat evening and have 6 blocks together and another 6 blocks made, but not yet together.  I will use the dark blue batik for a sashing, border it with more strings, and then use the dark blue again for the binding.  The top should be done by the weekend.  I think this one may go to the longarm quilter for an all-over pattern.  It will definitely not be hand quilted, see lessons learned for Winter Moonlight.  All that fabric bunched together makes for really hard going with a needle and thread.     
This photo was taken by Pam, my sister in law.  She thought it would be a good inspiration for a quilt.  It is, but she paints beautifully and I can hardly wait to see these paperwhites painted.  I think she takes lovely photos too.  I love the sunlight coming through the fading, translucent flower petals.  The golds and greens are gorgeous.    

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Winter Moonlight is finished!

I have finished hand quilting Winter Moonlight and have it bound, laundered, and hung on the wall in the library.  And though I can't show you a picture because Don still has my camera, it looks great.  I made a few mistakes with this quilt.  Knowing that I wanted to handquilt, there were several things that I should have thought of before I put this together...pressing seams so I didn't have bunching at every intersection, doing a much better job of piecing since the quilting accentuated all the little triangles, and planning the quilting process in the beginning so I didn't get stymied at the end and had to freehand some stars to fill in the blanks.  But in spite of all this...it still looks great (especially from more than 8" away) and I really like it hanging there. 

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Blogging Hiatus

I am, by necessity, taking a break from blogging.  The computer monitor died a couple days after Christmas and the computer is old enough that nothing is worth repairing or replacing.  I do have a new droid phone with all the bells and whistles, and although I can access my blog, I can't seem to be able to actually insert text, so I'm using Don's Apple to write this and hopefully within a couple weeks, we will have a new computer.  And since I am furiously handquilting the Winter Moonlight piece and am almost done, I will have photos of that as well as news of a new project or two in a couple weeks.   I did sign up today for a new hand applique class at the local quilt store, but it doesn't start until the end of April so there is lots of time between now and then to get a couple new projects off the ground.  I actually made a list of things that were completed in 2010 and was pleasantly surprised, so I hope that 2011 is productive for me and happy and healthy for you.