Sunday, May 31, 2015

Yay! A Finish!

I like to blog when I have photos to show off!

I took a short vacation (spur of the minute) a week ago to go home to Vermont to check on my Mom.  Of course that also meant spending some wonderful time with my two sisters and my youngest brother!  The thing with times like these are they are never long enough!

I suffer with a psychological condition called "Delusional Thought Process"!   I always think I can cram WAY more into my time at home than what is humanly possible -  hahaha!

When packing my suitcase, I threw in about 11 yards of fabric I had earmarked for a quilt for Mom.  For Mother's Day this year, I  searched on line for some pretty embroidery designs Mom could stitch up on her sweet little Elna.  I found some, sent them to my sister to download onto Mom's machine.  The rest of the instructions were for Diane (sister) to cut squares of fabric with stabilizer for Mom so she wouldn't have an excuse for NOT stitching out the designs.  Then, the squares would come to me to sew into a quilt top.  Diane would long-arm it, and other sister - Debbie -  would bind it.  This would truly be a joint effort.
Because I was planning a trip (and not telling them - I wanted to surprise them), I thought I would bring along the fabric and put the top together while at home.  [Enter Delusion Thought Process].
Vermont is such a beautiful state, some time MUST be spent driving the countryside and drinking in all the beauty God created!  [Cuts into sewing time].
Then, there's the thinking involved in taking the sweet embroidered squares and creating a whole quilt around them.  Once I decided what would look good (with Mom's input), I needed Diane to use her cool quilt program to plan it out and come up with directions.

This is what we came up with:







Pretty sweet, huh?  Well, let me tell you what a PAIN this is!!!
The pretty blue and white floral fabric stretches like crazy and has made this little product our BEST friend:



By the time Mom's quilt is done, we figure it will take about a gallon of this stuff!
It really is awesome!  We have had to spray and iron each piece to get the stretch to decrease.

Mom's quilt will need a total of 24 - 16" squares.  Some of those squares will be cut and used in half and some in quarters because the squares are on point.

When I left Vermont, we had a total of 11 blocks completed.  I pulled the little sister card - 
1.  I am on the road for work almost every week
2.  My daughter is getting married in a month
3.  My son is getting married in 3 months
4.  There is NO WAY I am bringing this fabric back home to work on

Diane was very gracious and said she would finish it.  Whew!


Being a middle child, I DID feel just a little bit guilty.  Sooo, I want my sister to know that I have been energized by our sewing time together and have taken a little quilt top out that I finished last year and actually QUILTED and completed it for my little grand daughter Alana.

I bought this as a kit a couple of years ago and hand embroidered the squares.  This is a Brenda Riddle pattern and the fabrics were by Lecien.


I did a stitch in the ditch around the rows with small squares and put an "X" in each square.
Then, I did a small meander around the dresses.  This ended up making the dresses "pop out".



The nice thing about the meander stitch, is you can turn your quilt upside down and it won't matter!


Sooo, when I grow up, I want to be a long arm quilter and do wonderful quilting like Judy Madsen of Green Fairy Quilts, and Jenny Pedigo of Sew Kind of Wonderful.
I took a Craftsy class on free motion quilting and this is my stab at a flower using echo type of stitching.


The finished quilt.


I wanted to sew the binding on by machine.  While it does not look bad, I think it is worth hand sewing the binding on!  It just looks so much nicer!


Well, the next project is a few quilted baby bibs and a self-binding receiving blanket for a baby shower I will be going to on Saturday.
Happy Sewing!  Hope to be back soon. . .