A milestone – but not mine

My aunt and uncle are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary next month, and it was my honor and pleasure to make a signature wall quilt for their celebration. Guests arriving to the party will be handed a permanent marking pen and asked to sign in a white space. The blocks are simple, as shown here in this previous post. I sewed them together on point, added triangles to create straight edges, and added borders.

The requested colors were shades of blue and shades of tan-to-brown. I am very pleased with the result, and I hope the recipients are as well. Once all the signatures are added, it will become a treasure they can hang on their living room wall.

Machine time today

I do become more motivated when a deadline comes nearer, so I was able to work on the wall quilt today and get the top completely assembled. I like how it looks, and it won’t be as plain when the signatures are added at the upcoming party. I just need to decide on a border, add batting and backing, machine quilt with stitch in the ditch around each white area, and add a hanging sleeve and quilt label. It sounds like I’m almost done!

DAY 31 OF MY 50 DAY CHALLENGE

Signatures, anyone?

Back to work at the quilting, and I have just a few weeks to complete a wall quilt. I have all the blocks done, and I was trying out different arrangements. Remember, I don’t have a design wall, I have a design floor – and I take pictures from the upstairs balcony. I’m dependent on natural light and the day was cloudy, so I apologize for the quality of the photos.

My original plan was to simply lay all the blocks going the same way. I also tried out the half-square triangles as a border, allowing the white halves to create a zig zag in the border.

My second thought was to have a center square, and all the blocks radiating out in the pattern. To fit all the blocks, I had to have an extra row below, so it isn’t exactly a centered square.

The third idea is the winner. I’m choosing to place all blocks on point and fill in the edges so it will be a rectangular quilt. I gathered the blocks from lower left to upper right along each row and numbered the rows. I started sewing the white triangles to the ends of the rows and sewing the blocks together when the usual happened – malfunctioning equipment. It’s not that my sewing machines break down often, it’s just that I make adjustments without realizing, and it takes a while to figure out what I did and make it right. It was time to quit for the day when that happened.

On a happier note, I’d listed two of my machines for sale and sold one that same day. I think the buyer was my sister in a previous life, and our love for sewing carried over into this one. She was as happy to see all my sewing machines as I was to show them to her. She got the nickel tour and promised to keep my phone number. It’s always good to meet someone who shares a hobby.

DAY 30 OF MY 50-DAY CHALLENGE

Back to normal

I’m back from my trip, and I had a wonderful time. Part of the day, though, I felt like I was missing something, and it turned out to be I was missing sewing on my projects.

I worked yesterday on the quilt blocks for the gift quilt. I have 45 complete blocks now, and before I lay them out and sew them together, I want a better idea of whether 45 will be enough. That also gave me 90 half-square triangles that will finish at 2 inches square, so I’m thinking I could use them as a border. It may depend on the layout.

In talking with family, there is a 50th anniversary next spring also, so I’m starting to plan ahead in my mind what to make for that one. It will also be a signature quilt to hang on the wall.

Another project I have been working on this summer is to scan all my old photographs so I have a digital copy of everything. I came across some old quilt  pictures, some of which I had forgotten I had done.

I made this quilt for a niece when she had her first baby in 1998. The design is called Card Trick, and the blocks seem to be overlapping cards. There were plenty of triangles in this one, and I made it before I had a rotary cutter and cutting mat. I did it the old fashioned way – measuring, marking, and cutting carefully with scissors. It took me longer than I thought it would, but I was very pleased with how it came out.

I experimented with a stained glass look, and made this rose quilt for my sister. The pieces were laid on a black background and I used monofilament thread and a blind hem stitch to tack it all down. These days it’s so much easier with the narrow fusible black bias tape.

Happy with the rose quilt, I made this one for my mother. I used the same process as I described for the rose quilt.