NOVEMBER FREE MOTION QUILTING CHALLENGE AND MACHINE BINDING

I almost gave up on myself this month.  Yes, I almost didn't do my quilting challenge.  It has been a busy month and yesterday I was just plain tired.  

However, today is another day!  So I decided to do it.  I didn't practice as much as I should have.  I don't have any really imaginative quilting like some other people do, but I will say that I really appreciate sewcalgal for hosting the challenge all year.  And I appreciate the expert quilters, like Sarah Vedeler who were willing to share there expertise with us.  The tutorial definitely is helpful in giving us a great method to follow.   So, here are my samples.

In my last post I blogged about the two donation quilts that I finished.  I forgot to mention that I bound them by machine.  Pat Sloan has an excellent tutorial on how to do the machine binding and you can get to it here.  I pretty much followed the directions to a "T".  Except, when I went to put the binding onto the girl's quit, I sewed it to the front instead of the back.  So, since I had followed Pat's directions about ironing the binding down 1/4", I was able to still stitch the blanket stitch from the front while folding under the binding as I went.  Luckily, it turned out OK.  (I was too lazy to take out the stitching since I was over half way before I realized that I had sewn in on the wrong side).

Front view of girl's quilt.

Back view of girl's quilt.

This picture shows both the front view and back view of the boy's quilt.

Thanks for the tutorial, Pat.  It really saved me a lot of time and for a quilt that might get a lot of use, this binding will work fine.

MARCH FMQ CHALLENGE AND A SURPRISE!

SewCalGal is hosting a free motion quilting challenge that lasts all year.  Each month a quilting expert gives their advice and demonstrates how they quilt.  March's expert is Ann Fahl and below is my practice piece for the month.  By the end of the year, I'm hoping my FMQ has improved a lot.

Yesterday I was able to do my FMQ practice pieces on my new Janome 6600 sewing machine!!!

Wednesday DH and I went to the sewing machine shop to pick up my sewing machine.  While waiting for the repairman, we looked at some sewing machines and DH told me that he wanted to get me a new one for our 50th anniversary (in August)!

This sewing machine quilts like a dream and it has a larger space, so it will be easier to quilt large quilts.  Yea!!!  It sews a lot faster than my old machine and has other features that make it easier to quilt.  I can't wait to do more quilting on it.  I better hurry up and get some tops sandwiched!  I'll see you later!

MANSFIELD PARK FINISHED

I never had any desire to make a basket quilt until I saw this one displayed at a booth and I bought the pattern right away.  I don't remember how long ago it was, but it took me a while to start making it.  I am very happy with it.  Monday night I took it to my guild meeting for show and tell and had very positive comments!

Sunday morning we were home and our next door neighbor came over to tell us that the tranformer behind our two houses was on fire!  We had a storm during the night and our electricity had been off for several hours, but came on about 8:30.  Then it went off again about 10:30 and that's when the neighbor came over.  If you look closely, you can see the yellow/orange flame on the top part.

The fire department came out, but they didn't do anything

You can see a little yellow on this picture.

The fire department leaving.  You might be able to see that it had been raining.  We got quite a bit, which was wonderful!  It's raining again this morning.

Thanks for all your sweet comments on my last post!  It means a lot to me.