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July 20, 2013

Friday Night Sew In

Sugarlane Quilts is hosting a Friday Night Sew In. Since I am constantly working on one project or another, I thought "Why not? Sounds like fun". After all, when does getting together with a bunch of quilters to sew not fun?

Well... That depends. I spent the night on a task that some do not find fun and had my first venture into basting. We will see if I managed to maintain flatness. My sewing machine does not do machine quilting, so this is another hand quilting project. The Sweet Pea quilt is temp shelved as I seem to have forgotten to buy backing and that is now on it's way. Connecting Threads thankfully is currently running a backing sale. What perfect timing!


This picture is from the quilt roughly half basted. Ended up taking 3-4 hours total. Currently working on motifs for the hand quilting. Looking at stars and deciding on connections between them. Grateful to have this task out of the way. =)
This quilt is a memorial to my mother who passed away several years ago. She taught me to sew and love fabric when I was 10. She always wanted to ride in a Hot Air Balloon and see the land from the air. She would have loved this quilt. Some elements blend in, for example there is a purple blanket stitch used on the applique kite tail bows and a silver lining on the clouds(also blanket stitched). The rays of the sun are golden glass beads and the basket ropes are brown yarn.

July 16, 2013

Sweet Pea Quilt

I would love to say that I have made some progress. Mostly experiencing frustration.
This was the starting point. With a few additions over the last few months, I increased the size from 45" to 90"... or so I thought.








 I made a few changes. Mostly to the size of the blocks and the sashing.






I made the assumption that if I took 6" blocks and 2" sashing = 45", then doubling to 12" blocks and 4" sashing would = 90".
Well, I forgot to never assume and always double check your measurements. Somewhere along the line things shrank and now I have a lovely quilt that is only 77" square. I lost 13 INCHES!! Will take a few pictures when I go make the sandwich, currently very unhappy with the shrinkage and do not have an easy way to fix it without changing the pattern.