Gridlock finished.................

I loved making this Gridlock quilt with Marcia Derse fabrics.  The original quilt is in a Kaffe Fassett book and I studied the quilt photo for ideas for piecing the blocks.  The original quilt was made by Liza Prior Lucy with the idea coming from a knitted garment that Kaffe designed and knitted.  There are suggestions how to make this one, but not specific directions.  I just had fun experimenting with the fabrics.

The backing and binding are Marcia Derse fabrics too.  It is 65" x 91".  

The fun of making this quilt is that each block was a unique little mini quilt design.  Then the end process was putting all of these mini designs into one big quilt top.

I finished the top at the end of November last year.

Amaryllis update:

Both bud stalks are getting tall and the tallest one is starting to open.  The picture that came with the bulb shows red blooms

I think it looks more like white with red streaks.  Whatever color it is I know I will love it.

Around 2 p.m. yesterday I looked out the west window and saw the blue sky and white clouds in the distance.  It got to us and then back to gray skies and snow showers within a few minutes.  I hope we get the sun predicted on Sunday.  Monday, partly cloudy, Tuesday mostly cloudy and then back to gray skies and snow showers.

 

Almost done.............

All 4 corners are stitched but I have 27" left to stitch on the last side.  I worked on this several times yesterday.

I noticed this frayed thread near an edge as I was hand sewing the binding.  It is a spot where the thread frayed but didn't break but it caused a skipped stitch.  With all of the trouble I had quilting this one I can see I am going to have to follow every stitching line and see if there are more spots like this.  I can stitch over these spots on my Pfaff with matching thread and hope it doesn't distract from the beauty of the piecing.

Exciting mail!!!

A Christmas postcard from Vicki Welsh was in the mail yesterday.  I get an email with a preview of my mail of the day and it showed it on Wednesday but the card wasn't in my mailbox.  Maybe the mailman wanted to enjoy it one more day.

I put it up on my bulletin board wall with the others from previous years.  I will probably rearrange them today so 2 reds aren't next to each other.  I just love this collection and I leave it up all year.

The weathermen were downplaying the chance that we would get accumulating snow but the ground has a light covering now and snow predicted overnight and again today.    With the cold weather we are going to have for over a week I think we will have a white Christmas.

Binding started...........

I decided on a 2 tone purple print for the binding on the Gridlock quilt.  The backing fabric is a grayed lavender so they look nice together.  I have almost half of the hand stitching done.

I also sub cut the last 5 sets of stratas for the 9 patch block and got them sewn.  This is 20 blocks.  Since they are going to finish at 4.5" I will need to sew some more stratas for the next batch of blocks.

The weather channels I watch on TV are in Chicago and they mentioned no sun for the last 10 days.  I think we had a little sun on 2 of those days (I'm 60 miles from Chicago) but most of the days have been pretty dreary.  They are promising some sunshine on Sunday but only 30 degrees.  It will feel warm inside but only look warm outside..

 

Getting ready to quilt..............

The thread basting was finished yesterday and now the colorwash is on the sewing table for thread selection.

I think I will use a 60 wt. thread in the bobbin in a light gray or light blue.

If you are interested in the Colorwash 360 class and want to be on the waitlist for early notification  go to this link.

This is why night sewing is a challenge.  The brown on the right is the right side of the fabric, the one on the left is wrong side.  This is one of the few fabrics that looks almost as good on the back as on the right side.  I just had a 9" seam to pick out so it was ready for assembly quickly.

I cut and sewed 6 more sets of 9 patches.  There are 4 of each in 5 piles and 3 of the remaining pile.  One fabric was narrower than the rest.

'

When I went out to fill the bird feeders I noticed how big and healthy my Lenten Rose plants are.  The one in the center only had 3 leaves in the spring and the one on the left was pretty small too.  The only one that bloomed this year was the one on the right.  I hope all three will bloom next year.

 

Just a little sewing

I worked on a non-sewing project for many hours yesterday so I just had a little time to sew at night.  I have 17 combinations of stratas sewn and got them all pressed.  Six of them were sub-cut into the 9 patch pieces and four blocks of each combination were sewn.  I won't be designing with these any time soon and will get the other 11 sets cut and made into blocks whenever I don't have another project to work on.

I know I need to start baking Christmas cookies the middle of this week.  I only have 2 boxes to mail this year because my grandson moved back from Colorado.  I usually start with the cookies that never seem to get stale and work my way up to the ones that look best when fresh.

Photographer was tired............

I was so tired by the time I got to the photography so this Sunday only project is a little tilted.  I have sewn on side borders.  I had 3 leftover strips of triangle squares so I incorporated them in where they matched the orientation in the center blocks.

Then I thought maybe I need to add another border after the first one.  I think the strips need to brighter colors than these that were conveniently laying on my table Since I need to lengthen it more to get it to be a better rectangular shape, it means at least a 6" border on top and bottom.  That could be a combination of 1", 2" and 3" or two 3" or maybe two 3" and a 1" strip for a 7" border.  I was clearly too tired to make a decision so this will stay on the design wall for another day.  (After studying the photos on the computer screen I'm not sure it needs that second border.)

Meantime I'll trim the Gridlock quilt and get binding sewn on and get the striped X blocks pressed.

 

Gridlock quilted...............

I got brave and turned on the longarm.  I got up to the third section of approximately 15" before the problem started.  I was actually thinking about what I would load next because it was going so well.  About 5" in, the thread shredded.  It's not unusual to have that happen once or twice in a big quilt so I rethreaded and checked my bobbin.  It was pretty low and there was a little piece of lint under the arm on the bobbin case.  I took care of that and started up again.  The thread shredded again, I checked the needle, adjusted it slightly and started quilting again.  In the rest of this section and most of the rest of the way down the quilt, I can only estimate the thread shredded at least 20 times.  I changed the needle thinking it might be a bad one, changed to a different spool of thread.  I finally got it to stitch almost all of the last 6" with it only shredding twice in the last 2 passes.  Anyone who thinks a longarm is carefree and fast, well it is part of the time, not all of the time.

I chose organic straight line quilting because the Marcia Derse fabrics seemed to call for it.

Sometimes the lines were fairly straight.

Some lines had some bends in them, mainly because I'm walking along with the machine as I move it and that causes a little jerk now and then.

I'm pretty happy with the quilting but it took me over 4 hours to do what would have been 2.5 hours if everything had gone well.