Hi, I set myself some creative goals at the beginning of the year, and one of them was to finish a quilt for the local guild's show in May. Another was to learn to machine quilt, including free motion. Well they go together because I never would have finished it in time by hand.
I looked at the WIP I had - and decided the 'kites' quilt top was the most feasible one to finish. The top was done, and I'd even prepared the backing and cut the batting to size. The only reason I hadn't sandwiched it was because I thought I should mark it first. Also, I wasn't sure originally if I was going to try to machine quilt it or hand quilt it. (I understood that you should use pins for machine quilting, and hand basting for hand quilting.)
I also realized that I really love the design - and it's been sitting around as a UFO for too long! The quilt is bright colored kites on a sky background, and I had so much fun with selecting the colors for the kites.
In January, I took some machine quilting classes from a LQS. I figured out I could do a lot of stitch in the ditch and then add the celtic knot type design that I'd planned with free-motion if I practiced a lot.... My free-motion was much more wobbly than I hoped - but then the piecing and stitch-in-the-ditch weren't perfect either. I stitched it over iron-on paper after testing all my special fabric and quilting markers and NOTHING was both easily visible and easy to wash out. It didn't help that the background is white with blue and purple 'clouds' since most of the washout markers are either blue or purple.
The paper worked ok, except I gave myself a panic attack when I got the quilt a bit wet to see if it would help to remove the paper and some of the colors bled!! After I tested on scraps, I got up the nerve to toss it in the washer with Orvus paste and a Dye Grabber sheet - and the excess colors came out and even came white again! (I thought the whole background might end up a little pinker than it started). And without fading the other colors!
Well yesterday I went to the quilt show, and my quilt looked just fine hanging there with all those others. Although *I* can certainly see the mistakes in the quilting, and I also noticed that most of the quilts were more heavily quilted. Although many were also quilted by someone besides the person who made the top.
The best part of the day was when I was sitting and chatting with some women from the guild. People I don't know, since I'm pretty new to the guild. I said something about being nervous about how my quilt would look next to all the others since I was new to free-motion quilting. One of the women asked me to describe my quilt, and when I said it had kites, she said 'the one with the neat celtic-know type quilting?' and she said that she had noticed it and stopped to look at who had quilted it. The other woman told me that the first woman had a long-arm and did wonderful quilting. So that just made my day.
I don't have picts yet, but I ordered the show DVD so I hope to get a nice pict from that to post. If not, I'll find someone with a digital camera.
I also had a lot of S.E.X. yesterday but that will have to wait for another post.
Lynnette in San Jose, CA