Monday, March 29, 2021

Gail's Simple Patchwork Quilt

I'm grateful that one of the local quilt shops has been recommending me to their customers recently who are looking for someone to help them finish their project.  Gail is one of those new customers.  This quilt is for her granddaughter and her granddaughter helped with the piecing.

When I went to load it on my frame, I ran into an issue, as you can see here.  I took it off the frame, measured it in multiple places, and found that the measurements varied a great deal.  I took pictures and called my customer who chose to have me fix it.
When I removed the borders, this is what I had to work with. 
The right side was more out of alignment than the left side, as you can see here.
I cut the borders to the proper sizes and reattached them, using some creative pinning to "straighten out" the sides as much as possible.  The result still had a little waviness but nothing that I couldn't handle on the frame through careful pinning and some spray starch.
This view was much better than the original.
Once the issues were worked out, it quilted up beautifully and the stitching added so much interest to the simple piecing.  Once it was done, you couldn't tell there were problems at all.
The panto design she chose was Calder.  Her granddaughter wasn't a flowers type of girl so this design definitely worked.  Glide Cool Gray 3 (my most requested color) was used for the top and Glide Mermaid was used in the bobbin.
The backing fabric was the same pretty Aqua and Green print used she used for the borders.
Gail was thrilled with the way it turned out and I'm sure her granddaughter was too.
I'm so glad that it only took a little of my time to correct the issues and be able to give my customer a beautiful finished quilt. 
 


Friday, March 26, 2021

Where have I been?

 I don't think any blogger means to not post for almost 2 months.  Certainly I don't but sometimes life gets in the way of things we want to do.  What have I been up to lately?

Sunshine hasn't had any motivation to work on the new quilt for her bed so when I asked if she wanted help, she readily said Yes.  At the rate she was going, this quilt was never going to get done.  All of the blocks are sewn and I'm working on adding the faces before I add the sashing and border.  This quilt will get finished before long.

I also finished piecing the Bella quilt for my bed.  You know the old saying...the shoe maker's children didn't have any shoes?  Well for all the quilts that I've made as cuddle quilts here or that I've made for others, I hadn't made one for our own bed.  The pandemic gave me the opportunity to finally get this under way.  I started cutting last May and then it got put aside for a couple of other projects but once those were finished after the holidays, this came back to the top of the list.  Now I just need to get it quilted and bound.
These are the culprit that has been robbing me of sewing time.  Yes it's Girl Scout cookie season here.  Not only do I help my daughter with her own sales but I'm the Cookie Mom for my troop and the Cookie Manager for my enter service unit (neighborhood area of troops).  Our service unit is the largest in our council of 15 counties and although we aren't allowed to booth sales this year, there's still inventory to manage, numbers to crunch and figures to reconcile with the baker's program used to manage the sale.
Without being able to sell at booths this year, our troop sales are down, which is to be expected.  We're saving for trips to NYC to see a Broadway show and Washington DC so we're happy with just being able to sell at all this year.  Hopefully next year, everything will be back to normal and we can work hard to earn funds to help pay for these future trips.
There has been a bunch of secret sewing also going on here but unfortunately I can't talk about any of it yet.  Just trust me....some of it is really exciting and I can wait to share the great news!