What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I want to thank everyone who has stopped by to pick up stuff that I no longer need or want. I had a quick visit with France yesterday as she stopped by to pick up some stuff. There'll be more, in bits and pieces as I unearth the unwanted things. And knowing that I can make quilts tops for Quilts of Valour or Project Linus from the fabrics that I don't need or want is so freeing. The more that goes in those piles, the more I want to get rid of - OK - within reason! HUGE thanks to ...

The second Dahlia panel is finished, and the colors on this one are so vibrant!  The colorway is called Sunset.  I didn’t have any threads to match the intense colors on this panel, so I went to Beginnings and purchased four Floriani embroidery threads in precisely matched colors.

It was easy to find a good match with the display of over 300 shades and gradations to choose from.  These threads are strong enough for high speed embroidery machines, so I thought they would be fine for the longarm, and they were.  The threads stitched beautifully without breaking.

I reviewed ...

The Dahlia panel quilt is finished, and now hanging up.  I did the back differently than usual as this wall hanging is too large for the quilt clips I have in the den.  I have a curtain rod with ring clips for hanging quilts in my sewing space, but for this one, I wanted to show you another method that works anywhere.

Start with a large strip of doubled fabric.  This one is 2-1/2-inches wide, with two sewn together so I could use the last bits of the fabric from the backing and binding.  You could use a five-inch ...

The quilting on this panel was a challenge in more ways than one.  When we left off here, the top section was done, and the machine was acting up.  Thanks to a lot of help from both the excellent tech guy at A1, Randy, and My Sweet Babboo, the machine is now humming along and behaving again.

For the next petal, I planned a scallop shell with three lines around the outer edge.  I didn’t get them done smoothly, and there are some bad wobbles in the lines.

This little clam shell fill was pretty easy.  Once I got ...

Last week I began quilting the dahlia panel, putting different motifs in each petal.  I had hoped to be done with this by now, but the longarm machine had other plans.  Here is where we left off, with the top section nicely under way.

On this petal, I planned a curved cross hatch with double lines.  To mark the quilting lines, I used a Clover White Chaco Liner, a chalk lining tool that makes a nice thin line, and my curved ruler.

Then, I used the curved ruler as a guide for the hopping foot, following the lines.

Horizontal lines ...

Since my block design motivation is taking a hiatus, I got out my dahlia panel in soft pastels, the Hoffman Dream Big Opal that I promised to show you.  I want to do this one for me.  It will be a practice piece for another one in the Sunset colorway to quilt for a Silent Auction.  Is it just as daunting to you to face one of these panels?  I’ve done one other, the Leaves panel in a previous post (Fear of Free Motion), and it seemed easier to follow the vein lines already in the printed panel.  This ...

H MY GOD -- we had so much fun yesterday at the Virtual Sewing Retreat. Fran from Sudbury poped in, Mary from Scarborough, Carol from Parry Sound, Susan from London, and many others more local and are too numerous to mention. Sorry!!!  But what a fun time. OK - so I didn't get a lot of sewing done, and I'm perfectly OK with that. 

It was great to actually have a NORMAL conversation with a group. I love it!!!!

We got to see other people's sewing rooms, projects, pets, and a whole lot of stuff. We got to sew ...

Have you ever have one of those days? Nothing seems to go right and you're just out of sorts with the world? That seemed to be the start of my day yesterday. However, I had a good chat with myself in the afternoon - literally I talked to myself out loud to snap out of it and I felt much better afterward. Good thing no one was privy to that conversation.

I think this quote fits me perfectly for yesterday. I wasn't all here, but after the chat - I was.

Quote of the day

So if you have a totally productive day, but you don't work on what you had planned, is that still a productive day?

In the morning, I trimmed two quilts intending to get the bindings on them. I also have a couple of other quilts that need to be bound that I was hoping to deliver to Quilts of Valour today. And I wanted to make the backing for that Dresden Plate quilt.

NONE of that got done. There are no deadlines for any of that stuff, so I'm not worried.

But what did I do? Well - I ...

Überall habe ich sie gesehen die Panels "Dream Big" und ganz plötzlich hatte ich 3 von ihnen. Eins ist fertig und die anderen beiden müssen noch. Aber das sollte kein Problem sein.

I saw the dream big panels all over the internet - and then suddenly I had three of them. One of them is quilted. The others will follow soon.