Turning Twenty

I finally finished the binding on the "Turning Twenty" quilt that I made for my daughter's riding instructor. I used a horse and southwest theme because the instructor just moved to Las Vegas to manage a large horse barn there. I have to admit this was not one of my favorite patterns. I chose it because of the large scale of some of the prints I used and also because it is supposed to be so quick, but it sure wasn't quick for me! Anyway, I'm posting two pictures, one of the quilt being "safety tested" by Jasmine, my number one quilt inspector and the other of it hanging on the fence out back. Unfortunately we've had 25-30 mph winds, so the quilt was flapping in the breeze and you really can't see the borders. I'll try to take a better photo before mailing it.

First Quilt

The Stashbusters topic of the week is to talk about how long you've been quilting and your first quilt. I started quilting two years ago and am self taught. I have loved quilts for as long as I can remember, but there were no quilters in my family. I bought a beginning quilting book by Alex Anderson and proceeded to follow the directions. Now, mind you, I had not been near a sewing machine since the 7th grade (I really don't want to admit how long ago that was!) so the entire process was quite a challenge. Anyway, I made this rail fence quilt that is supposed to be a wall hanging (36" x 36") and promptly stuffed the top in a drawer without quilting it. After finishing a few more projects I drug it out last year when a friend of mine bought a HandiQuilter so that I would have a piece to practice machine quilting on. I did a simple meander and bound it. It now belongs to Ellie, our miniature Daschound, and she sleeps with it every night!

Productive Day

I kept myself moving today and really accomplished a lot in the sewing room. Yesterday I finished the quilting on the "Turning Twenty" quilt that I made for my daughter's riding instructor and today I cut off all the excess backing and batting and made the binding. I did not have enough of any one fabric left over to bind the quilt so I made a scrappy binding of the leftover bits. I've wanted to do this for awhile and really like the results. I'll post a picture of the completed quilt once it's done.

I started a quilt a while back for a friend of mine's first grandchild. It's really small, but for some reason I kept doing one thing and putting it aside. I managed to make the binding and sew it on today. I tried the method used by Evelyn aka Starfishy that she described in her blog recently. It was great! I will procrastinate binding a quilt forever because I hate hand sewing the binding on the back (it uses up valuable knitting time!) This method is all done by machine and is so much easier. I'm posting a picture of the quilt - it's a Dutchman's Puzzle block I really like how it came out.

Last but certainly not least I forced myself to work on one of the UFO's from my niece's wedding last year. This is a siggy quilt that she used instead of a bride's book and I'm sure she'd appreciate it if I get it done! This block is called Cracker and works well for this type of quilt. The blocks needed a lot of squaring up (hopefully my skills are improving and this won't be such an issue in the future) and I just dreaded doing it. I squared up 40 of 100 blocks this evening and sewed 20 of the blocks into the units that compose the quilt. I'll post a picture of this later when I get a bit further along. I actually really enjoyed working on this piece and could kick myself for putting it in a drawer!