The ' Top of the Talk" is DONE!

A complete pieced top is always satisfying . The gal that gets this should be pretty happy lest we give it to her to quilt for herself. That would be BAD!! Hopefully we will get it quilted and bound before the middle of next month when the recipient moves away. I'm pleased with the result.

Planning the finish on "Let's Talk"

While I don't do alot of traditional quilts, when I do as in this group gift for a friend project, I seldom follow the pattern exactly. The original pattern for this quilt included plain fabric strips joining the otherwise fun blocks. Since the blocks already had a feeling of fun and whimsy, I wanted to keep that feeling going..... I made 16 half square triangled 2 1/2" pinwheel blocks as cornertones of sashing.... then auditioned fabrics for sashing strips...
The recipient loves greens, golds, and browns.... thus the gold and greens in the audition. The gold background looked a bit warm for this otherwise light and fresh project.... so I settled on a white and green sashing to keep it fresh looking.
So.. I go to sew all day.. Yeah! Tucked away in my warm and cozy mountain sewing room, I got busy! I was not alone, however!
A quilter's best friend was nearby with evidence contained in my scraps waste can .

Life and chocolate are GOOD!

Fall meets Winter

Last night, I slept all night. Sheer bliss following the previous night of pounding rain that woke us regularly. The same rain forecast was expected for last evening and I was thrilled when I awoke so rested. The reason it seems the rain turned to snow and we can officially say goodbye to the beautiful fall leaves, Boo Hoo!!!

While I watched snow fall, an occasional leaf left a tree to land atop snow covered ground.

Even my car got slushy...

Only my hubby's tires preceeded me as I drove off the mountain to worship service. What a marvelous artist is our creator

Throwing out my machine cleaning excuse!!!

While I've always been faithful about keeping fuzz buildup out of my machine, I've been less faithful about removing the entire bobbin assembly , cleaning and oiling the rails. My excuse... I regularly have trouble getting everything put back in the right .. i.e. how to set the things back where they started. Enough said. DUH. In this digital age of cameras.... I now take a snapshot before I begin, and its easy to know if I have it right. Double DUH!!!!

Here's my most recent before photo . YEP... time to clean!

Matching thread to needle

I am quilting Jambo for a clients first ever painting so we want the artwork painting to show. That said, I'm quilting dog Jambo with a combination of monofilament and almost as skinny 100 wt invisafil thread.
The message .. SKINNY THREAD = SKINNY NEEDLE. I like a 60/8 or 70/10 sharp. It's a narrow shaft needle that in turn pushes less fabric aside as it moves through.

Here's an area around his doggie collar.

On the other hand... FAT THREAD=FAT NEEDLE.
The background grass area called for some quilting interest and I used a variety of Sulky's blendables... mostly 30 wt.... a little bit here and there of 12 wt. A fat thread calls for a larger needle.... I use a 90/14 for that job.
By the way.... check out this small pack container ( $1.00 at Staples store). it sits smartly in my smaller sewing cabinet drawer, as you can likely see holds many packs of needles, and theres room inside for one of my favorite things... a needle puller rubber disk which i use to loosen/tighten the needle holder knob on my machine.

Prepping and Pinning "Jambo"

'Getting this guy ready to quilt! I generally iron my backing, my batting ( sometimes thru a press cloth depending on whether man made fiber ( eg poly) is part of the mix, and certainly iron the top. I stretch the backing, lay the flat batting atop, and smooth. I will sometimes use a very light temp spray application on a half quilt at a time for bonding. ( by the way... I like Sulky's temp spray because it has a small spray area with minimal propellant so I can use it indoors). I will repeat this light spray process with the top.

If the quilt is very small.... I might then pin at each of the 4 corners and get on with it. If it's larger (eg tabletop size or larger), I generally pin as well. BUT know that if I have temp strayed, I use about half the amount of pins than I would with no light temp spray. The way I tend to quilt art pieces ( heavier than most) I push my quilts around so much that the pinning is extra insurance things stay where I mean them to stay!

All that said, when pinning, I tend to pin inside out, and place pins still open across the quilt top. Doing this will reduce the possibility of shifting an area during the pin closing process. They look like little soldiers, huh?
That done.. close pins
Do yourself a big favor and pin/stabilize the outer pieces of backing to batting as insurance from the backing unknowingly rolling back under the quilt sandwich, and getting 'quilted in!" It only takes one extended rip out session to know how well spent these 5 minutes can be.

Remember this fella?

He was painted by a student 2 months ago..done in a private class with me. Now.... time to get this quilted. My schedule was too hectic thru Oct. / early Nov. to touch this, but I will begin tomorrow and somehow get this and a couple other projects done this month . EEK. Who needs sleep?!