Feb 04 08

What’s on the Machine Bed and Blog News!

I made a new quilt last week, (actually, I just started quilting it, but I got it fused and pieced last week). Here’s a not so great picture of the top:

violet-heart-flower-whole-t.gif

I love, love, LOVE making tops like this because I am a total thread junkie and I can do lots of fun thread work on the fused pieces while it’s still just in that quilt TOP stage. Here’s a close up of the top of the flower and you can get a sense of the free motion embroidery on the top of the flower. The “body” of the flower is trapuntoed, so that section is quilted already:

violet-heart-flower-threadw.gif

Here’s the backside of that same area:

violet-heart-flower-trapunt.gif

I started quilting it this afternoon. I’m using the silk batting by Hobbs and I just love this stuff-it’s like quilting buttah! Here’s a shot of the flower section on the machine bed after I’ve stitched around the perimeter of everything with invisible thread. There isn’t any background quilting around anything yet, but you can start to appreciate the protrusion caused by the trapunto:

violet-heart-flower-protrus.gif

I’m trying to keep that notion of “blooming” or unfolding going in my quilting design, so I quilted 2 feathers kind of unfolding after they emerge from the center base of the quilt. Here’s part of one:

violet-heart-flower-feather.gif

The feathers are stitched in turquoise size 12 pearl cotton Presencia thread. You buy these in balls and just hand wind them onto an empty spool or cone:

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I’ll post more as this project moves along. In other news, Brenda Gail Smith has posted another tutorial on an alternative method to finish the edges of your quilt without using a binding. I’m finding that these are very useful skills to acquire because you just never know when they might come in handy! Check them out in her blog at serendipity patchwork. (Brenda taught me how to do links last week and I’m kind of going nuts with my new-found power!) If you’re looking for some pure entertainment, I’ve got a pretty funny quilting blog for you. Check out Mark Lipinski’s blog and be sure to scroll down to his Jan 26, 2007 post-it’s a great play-by-play of his nightmarish hotel stay during the Road-2-California! I’m off to clean off the interior of my car. We flew out of town last week and I made the mistake of leaving an unopened can of diet cherry coke inside, while the outside temp varied from -1 to 40 degrees. Of course, it exploded and the inside of my car has splatter everywhere…looks like a frigging crime scene!

One Comment

  1. Maggie Says:

    Thank you, Patsy! Thank you, thank you for sharing!!! Beautiful work!
    Do you happen to know of a source for directions for the looped edging? It looks like a cord of some kind from what I can see on line. Sharon Schamber uses it a lot.

    Maggie

    I’ve never tried to do it but you might want to search YouTube for instructional videos-I know Sharon has several videos on YouTube and maybe she’s done one on that topic.
    Patsy