As promised... pics are here.

So I have received pics from my friend of the final quilt.  Unfortunately, the ceiling fan was blowing so it is not a full face on photo.

I really enjoyed working with the Quilter's Dream Wool batting.  It gave my feather's such a wonderful look.  I quilted with Aurifil 50wt cotton for the entire quilt, which is unusual for me.  But I wanted to be authentic to her mother's style.  Plus, it worked so smoothly in my machine, which is rare for the 830 these days.  I am pleased to say, I marked nothing on this quilt :-), including the stems!  So I guess my feathers are finally getting there.

Of course, the quilt brought tears to her eyes, especially as she read the dedication on the label.  Here is a picture of the two of us, once she composed herself :-)...

She truly is my longest and bestest!! 

Much Love....

Deadlines are good...

So I guess I just needed a deadline to kick me in the pants and get me going!  I have made good progress on this piece.  I am loving the feathers.  One more setting triangle to go. 

Still need to figure out what to do in the checkerboard border.  But if I can get the last triangle and the outer border done tomorrow night after work, then Friday I can do the checkerboard border and block it.  Leaving Saturday to square it up and do the binding and Sunday morning to wrap it!!!

This is the first time I have quilted a whole top using the Quilter's Dream Wool. In the past I only played on practice pieces.  I love the texture it is giving the quilting.  The compass really looks trapunto'd once I outline it and stitched in the ditch of the top and middle layers of the folded compass.  The circle geese have the same effect, as I outlined them as well.

But my question for the night is....  has anyone blocked a piece that has wool batting?  Does it shrink a lot?  Anything I should be aware of?

Appreciate the input.

Night all!!!

It's been a long time coming...

Sandra from India posted a comment on my blog last week, asking me why I stopped blogging.  To be honest, I hadn't planned to stop posting.  It is just that I really only blog about my quilting.  Not the other myriad of things that go on in my life.  Unless that is, they relate somehow to quilting :-).

Well for the last 2 months, I have done very little quilting of my own.  My son graduated college... WooHoo...  we went on a family vacation early this year as I now have two 'working, supporting society' children.  My son started work on July 2nd :-).  Then 3 days after we returned from vaca, I spent two weeks in Mexico, Argentina and Chile for work.  It was all fantastic, but that meant in the month between Mary 25th and June 24th, I was home for a total of 7 days.  No quilting then.

Once I returned, I had to get back to the quilt I am quilting for a friend of a friend, who brought it on Etsy to give as a wedding present.  It is huge and it is a traditional double wedding ring that he wants quilted traditionally, so you know it is taking me a long time...  :-(.  So of course, I can't post progress pictures of someone else's quilt until it is in their hands.

So that brings me to this weekend, when I realized I will be having dinner at my best friends house (we have known each other for 39 yrs ...  yikes) on her birthday.  Neither of us picked the date.  It was picked by another women, she wants me to meet.  But in this revelation, I realized that the quilt I started for her almost two years ago, could really be finished for her birthday if I focused.  So today, a good friend (Thanks Teri Lucas !!) dropped me off a piece of wool batting and tonight I basted it and got all the in the ditch work done, as well as the free motion quilting in the center Mariner's Compass square.

You may remember this quilt, as I made the center compass in a class taught by Mary Anne Ciccotelli, using her 3D, folded fabric technique.  I then used the folded flying geese around the center medallion and then again for the outer boarder.  You can find more info about the top here, here and here.  Told you it's been a long time coming :-)...

But for now, here is the quiling progress for tonight.

I like my corners.  I can't believe I did them without a single marking.  I started to mark at least the straight line from the corner to the tip of the flying geese and decided against it. :-).  The photo's are a little blurry (or I am soo tired, they look blurry to me).  But either way I will try to take better pictures tomorrow and share it with you.

Night!