A Win and Some Progress on the Baby Quilt

Real quick, I just want to say how amazing it was to receive so many comments on my All Grayed Down quilt! Thank you to everyone that commented as it made me realize that other people can see the charm of that quilt too. It's a quilt that I seriously wondered if only 'a mama could love'. lol  It's almost impossible to see our own work through unbiased eyes isn't it?

Wall hanging kit

Yesterday I got this kit in the mail! It was pretty thrilling to get a package all the way from Australia, let me tell you! Kate from Empty Field blog had a little giveaway a few weeks ago and I won this very sweet Prairie Flowers wall hanging kit.  I can't connect to her blog right now, but hopefully she'll be back up soon as I very much enjoy following her blog and viewing her beautiful quilting progress.

I'm definitely making good progress on the baby quilt now. I've spent a lot of time with the walking foot the last couple days trying to make it all come out right.  Some of my lines are a little bit wobbly (esp. where I stitched in the ditch) but I do think I'm improving slightly. Fingers crossed nobody will ever inspect the lines too closely.*wink  One of the things I most love about the modern quilting craze is the grid or straight line quilting and that's what I'm trying to learn first. I know it's very annoying to only see bits and pieces of a quilt, but after this coming weekend I should be able to show a full on picture of the quilt!

Baby quilt progress

Yay for me! I found a nice chunk of fabric for the binding hiding out in my totes. It's a reject piece that was given to me at least six years ago so it's especially fun to finally put it to good use. The very light green color is lovely and it works hard to pull the lightness of the quilt clear out through the borders. I ended up doing some big stitch quilting in the very center of the quilt too--probably too much as my finger is now feeling sore--but I think it adds another special dimension to the quilt.  Okay, time to get off the computer so the binding can get stitched down and this thing will be ready to go on a little journey this weekend!

Machine Quilting Obstacles (Otherwise Known as Puckers)

I know I hop, skip and jump around from project to project.  It is what it is. Progress in tiny little steps instead of leaps and bounds. Some of us actually work better that way!  I learned to stop fighting the expected methods of progress a long time ago.  My quilts and I are much happier with the new plan.*wink

Sandwiching a quilt top

This was what I decided to do yesterday.  Well, actually, I decided to do this sometime last week and then managed to put it off for a few more days out of absolute dread and reluctance.

Pin basting

I'm a hand quilter.  I might not be very good at it! but that's how I finish up almost all my quilts and have now for a lot of years.  The problem is, I'm starting to get quilt tops stacked up to the sky and I'll never be able to complete them if I just stick to the hand quilting program. (Insert very sad face. Really, really sad face.)

Learning to use my walking foot

You know I love the look of hand quilting, but priorities must be made. So now I have a walking foot which needs to be used so I can stop feeling guilty about the purchase price and also so that finished (but not yet quilted) quilt tops can stop haunting me in my sleep.  We won't even go into how much I need my beauty sleep. lol

Some MQ progress

#2 in the 9-patch series was chosen as my guinea pig. I decided to do some partial machine quilting and then leave some areas to come back and hand quilt later. I think I first learned about this approach from Little Island Quilting, but wherever it was--it's a great idea.  It could be just the sneaky way I need to eeease myself into the world of machine quilting.

A few too many of these....

I am facing some obstacles of course. Rome wasn't built in a day. In the span of about three hours yesterday I learned three extremely important things:

1. I need to drop the feed dogs just a smidge.  Not a LOT, thank you very much.
2. I don't pin nearly close enough or even stretch my quilt tops taut enough? Ahem. Perhaps I have gotten, shall we say 'lazy', with that part of the process...
3. Slowing down is very, very good. The machine doesn't have to race across the top of the quilt at 80 mph. Woosah.....