Hi Guys, OY THE PAIN -- LOL! It's time to vent again -- sorry :-))! I am unbelievably happy to have gotten past the piecing stage on this quilt. I had the quilt top put together back about a month ago and then went on holiday -- a holiday I not only needed but deserved after trying to deal with a dozen different shades, prints and weights of white silk AND silver metallic piping!!! I decided on how to quilt the whole thing, too. Remember, there is no binding on this quilt -- it is to be a "birthed" quilt with MORE silver metallic piping around the four sides. I decided that I would do the majority of the quilting *before* I got the backing attached. I got the front, a layer of relatively cheap natural silk and then the batting (had to use regular cotton for budgetary reasons) pin basted about 2 weeks ago. I drafted a free motion quilting pattern for the Stack & Slash blocks and will use one of my decorative stitches to do something geometric on the four pieced silver & white obi fabric corner blocks. I did SITD on all the seams using the white silk thread so that I could take the pins out of the blocks as I come to them. I have traced the quilting pattern onto special PP vellum and have managed to get the top and bottom rows of blocks quilted. I also did echo quilting around the design elements of that center Uchikake panel. I have the four blocks down either side yet to quilt but that shouldn't take too long. Once I get the backing on the whole thing, I will do some sort of stitching in silver metallic thread to hold the whole thing together. I need to add some tiny individual tacking designs to the open areas of the center panel and those will be done in the silver metallic after the backing is on. I'm hoping to have the whole thing finished in the next few weeks. I'm not looking forward to adding the large silver corded piping to the outer edges. It's not a difficult job, just a "fiddly" one and I'm getting tired of dealing with the silk -- LOL. OK -- time to get back to the "real" sewing. I am now the official Seamstress to Santa -- LOL! I am making a lovely red taffeta Christmas plaid vest for the Santa who is in the big Atlanta Christmas parade every year. He's a wonderful Santa, too, with lovely long white curly hair and a full beard, round rosy cheeks and sparkly blue eyes. Needless to say, he does the Santa thing in the local malls and he starts doing that on 17 November!!! I can't believe they have Santa in the malls in mid November!! Oh Well -- the stores gotta make their money and I'm sure the kids are thrilled. It's back to the sewing machine salt mines for me :-). OH -- I will post more White Silk WIP photos as soon as I take a few. CiaoMeow >^;;^<
PAX, Tia Mary >^;;^< (RCTQ Queen of Kitties) Angels can't show their wings on earth but nothing was ever said about their whiskers! Visit my Photo albums at