quilting commences

I exchanged the "sticky" batting, as per suggestions by my dear mother and aunt, both of whom would know better than I. The husband, aka harp engineer, aka dress engineer, aka crazy rocket scientist thought this was a pretty good idea as well. He seems to think that I have "issues" with adhesives, largely stemming from the evening that he came running to the rescue as I shrieked and jumped about in circles after super-gluing all of my fingers together. Happily, I didn't quite glue that hand to my leg, but it was a very close thing. Um, where was I?

Ah yes, new batting. I got low-loft bonded polyester batting, just like my "quilting for you and your hamster too" book suggested for a newbie like myself. And then I did something absolutely shocking....I actually tested it.

I spent much of Sunday afternoon basting the quilt layers together. Shockingly (again), I actually read the directions in the book before doing it, although I have to admit that I adapted the basting layout slightly to a hybrid of their two suggestions. I can't ever leave well enough alone and it seemed like common sense. The rocket scientist wandered by while I was doing this and commented that common sense is generally based on experience and that a wise man once said that experience is generally gained just after it is needed. Hmmm.....

I'm working on the first (center) star motif. I'll take a picture once I have enough to see a bit of. I actually think I'm kinda getting the hand of the rocker stitch. I think all the hand-stitching I did on costume work is helping a lot. It's not all that different except that I'm trying to get the back side to look nice as well.

cast your vote

I've been trying to figure out what design to use for the quilting on this. Enter powerpoint to the rescue. Would you ladies kindly take a look at the proposed designs below and weigh in with your opinion?

Design A:
 


Design B:
 


Design C:
 


Many thanks!

P.S. Harp is still making sawdust.

mother-daughter quilt

Hello!

Just a brief post to put a couple of pictures of the quilt top up. This is our first foray into mother-daughter quilting. We chose the design and fabric together, although I got the final say on colors since it's intended for my guest room. Mom pieced the entire thing (already!!!), and now I'm about to start the quilting. I say "about to" because we're still filling the house with harp sawdust, and the idea of covering this with sawdust is discouraging. Here's the quilt top:

 


It's not the greatest lighting, but you can see the idea. Look at all the colors! Note the asymetric placement of colors and the fact that one some stars, there are several points of a slightly different color. Amazingly beautiful, no? The original design showed this quilt made with single-color stars and a solid background, which meant that the lattice was virtually invisible. I greatly prefer it this way! Thanks Mom!

Here's a close-up of one of my favorite stars. I say that, although actually my favorite stars vary every time I look at it. I love these fabrics.

 


Next I need to figure out a quilting pattern. I haven't really worked out what I'd like to accent with it. I laid a bunch of thread colors down on the quilt top at home and didn't care for the effect with the lighter colors. I think this is meant to be more contemporary. I picked up a bunch of a rayon quilting thread in dark blue. It's got a nice sheen that I think will be complimentary. I also got some fairly thin quilt batting. I'm cheating though....it's got iron-on sticky stuff on either side, so no hand-basting. I'll have to report on how well that works. It was such a tempting notion.