Today is National Quilting Day and St. Patrick’s Day.
I have some errands to run this morning and then I will be in the studio this afternoon–quilting of course!
Celebrate!
7
Happy 65th Birthday Mom!
March 14 was my mother’s 65th birthday. We sent flowers……
Dad gave her flowers…..
While we were at Mom and Dad’s house for cake and coffee, Mom showed me how prepared she is for spring / Easter. These are just some of the decorations………
Did you take note of the quilts?
This is my favorite rabbit…………..
This rabbit has appeared every Easter for many, many years–since my brother and I were living at home!
My parents now have enough quilts that the “extras” needed storage space.
And, last but not least, the birthday girl ……….
Perfect Group Quilting Project
.JPG)
This is a quilt that I just finished quilting today. This quilt belongs to a quilt group that is planning to raffle it later this year. Proceeds from the raffle are to benefit cancer research.
.JPG)
Sometimes it is difficult to find a quilt pattern that can be accomplished successfully by a group of quilters because each individual’s piecing skills and measurements can be their own. A group of blocks made by different individuals can be challenging to put together into a nice flat quilt top.
The secret to the success of this quilt block is the “floating” star. The white pieces around the star are deliberately pieced larger than required. After the star block is finished it is squared to 9 1/2″. This squaring after piecing ensures that all blocks are exactly the same size. The sashing rectangles that surround the stars finish at 2 3/4″ wide and are either 7 1/4″ long for the top of the block or 9″ long for the sides of the block. Because these blocks are all pieced from scraps in each quilter’s existing stash, the only cost outlay for the group is the batting, backing and long arm quilting.
I have added the finished dimensions to the parts of the block onto the photo in case some of you want to make your own version of this star quilt.
UPDATE: This pattern is an Atkinson Designs quilt called “Lucky Stars”.
Spring Forward
Last night we moved our clocks forward one hour.
I am not usually too impacted by the time change but today it seems to have hit me harder than usual. The graphic above definitely does not reflect how I am feeling about the loss of an hour of sleep!
Even Joey seems to have been caught a little off guard!
Machine Quilting
Last Saturday at our guild workshop, I offered to help Kathy with her machine quilting. I brought along some of my smaller quilts to demonstrate that there is a lot you can do to machine quilt your quilts with your domestic sewing machine (DSM) and your walking foot.
Kathy commented that she should be writing down the ideas. No need to make notes, these pictures are posted for you, Kathy.
This first quilt is a rail fence miniature. As long as the curves or arcs are gentle, they can be accomplished quite nicely with a walking foot and there is no need to drop the feed dogs and wrestle with controlling the stitch length and moving the quilt at a steady speed while stitching in free motion.
This quilt was marked with a blue marking pen using the edge of a glass to make the arcs across two strips. 
This picture shows the closeup of the stitching on the blocks.
This is the back of the same quilt. The scallop design on the border was accomplished with a stencil. Again the curve is gentle and easily accomplished with the walking foot.
The secondary design was not intentional and has the appearance of the apple core block.
The alternate squares in this miniature nine patch were stitched to look like the nine patch blocks–simple straight lines.
I love it when a secondary design that wasn’t part of the original quilt plan emerges in my quilts. When I finished this log cabin quilt and showed it to my husband he declared that he could find the surprise in my quilt–the birds. This quilt was a simple two colour log cabin and there was no intention on my part to arrange the blocks to form four birds in the four corners of the quilt. Further to that, without realizing it, my quilting accentuated the bird image.
Simple parallel lines at an consistent angle finish off the border.
I believe they call the block in this quilt, Sister’s Choice. 
This is my favorite technique for a narrow sashing or border–a serpentine stitch. This stitch is a modified zig zag type stitch on my Bernina.
The border quilting on this quilt is straight lines at a consistent angle spaced in alternating narrow and wide widths.