Friday Finish

Eighteen of thirty quilts quilted and bound!  I'm getting more adventurous in my long-arming; today I am experimenting with straight-line quilting on the long arm machine:

I'm thrilled with the way this is turning out.  The only problem is, the tray on which my machine sits has a gouge in it (don't know how that happened) which makes the machine slip when it goes across that point. Which of course, makes the line crooked!  Now that I know where it does that, I can adjust for it.  But I have two lines of stitching that will have to be ripped out and re-sewn on the regular machine.

Three more quilts to add to my "ready to hand off" stack.  The first one was a "Sunday is for Scraps" project. I quilted it to test a new polyester batting from Pellon.  Poly batting is so much lighter than cotton!  I think I will donate this one to the nursing home -- it is just the right size for a wheelchair quilt, and it is lightweight enough that it won't be uncomfortable on a lap.

I am really proud of this next quilt. It is a Fat Quarter Fun project from early this year, "On a Slant."  I used the January Color Palette colors in Kona cottons (blogged here).

I quilted it with a spiky meander and used a multi-colored King Tut thread:

I love this quilting design with the geometric shapes of this quilt!

The third quilt this week is going in the "someday my boys will get married and I'll have another granddaughter" cache:

It is a Modern Quilt Relish design, "TV Dinner."  I used Moda's "In the Meadow" charm pack, so I'm calling it "TV Dinner in the Meadow."

I'm getting better at quilting flowers!  I experimented with ric rac and Susie's Magic Binding.  I decided to round the corners rather than try to miter the ric rac.

I took photos of the ric rac binding technique and it will be a Tuesday Tutorial someday.

Linking up to Thank Goodness it's Finished Friday at Quokka Quilts.

Tomorrow is another Fat Quarter Fun class.  We're making a Mary Ellen Hopkins design, "Nine to Five."  This color is a hint of my fabric choices -- can't wait to show you!


From the desk of your

January Color Palette Challenge

Last year I followed a blog that assigned a "monochrome quilt" challenge each month, a single color with a background color.  This year a real colorist, Vicki Welsh of Field Trips in Fiber will create a color palette for quilters (or painters, knitters, crafters!) each month.

Her January inspiration, some antique English tiles:

Vicki writes, "This is a photo that I took in the V&A Museum in September. These are tiles from an English ship made in 1882 by Architectural Pottery Company, Poole, UK."

Aren't they lovely?  My own interpretation of this color palette is inspired by a favorite Vera Bradley handbag:

I was surprised how close the colors on my bag were to the antique tiles.

I used my colors for the February Fat Quarter Fun group at Ruth's Stitchery.  Our pattern this month is by Cheryl Witt of sew-be-it in Billings, Montana.

"On the Slant" is a really fun design and it was interesting to see what colors my classmates chose.  Here is my finished top:

And a closeup.  The solids are all Kona cottons ranging from lightest blue to navy.  The border is "Japanese Chrysanthemum" by Philip Jacobs for Rowan, Westminster Fibers.

I'm amazed how well the border fabric goes with the solids. Usually I would choose the print first, then select other fabrics to go with it.  This time the border came after the top was mostly pieced.  The only thing I would do differently (always second-guessing) is to put the light yellow in the very center, so there would be less of it.

By the way, this is quilt top #10 for 2012!