This quilter/seamstress (a person good at whatever she does) wanted to gift a quilt for a baby but being as busy or in demand as she is, didn’t have time to piece a quilt. She opted for a solid sheet in the mom’s preferred colour (neutral) and asked me to do an all-over motif but needed me to pop in a circle occasionally.
On 20 September a quilter brought me a quilt to do and along with it a massive bag full of thread. This is such a huge gift as it contained 11 spools of Isacord, 7 spools of Glide, 1 Colorful and several colours of Marathon.
I, fortunately, do not have to buy thread frequently as I have a decent stock but
occasionally a quilt requires a unique colour and the upsetting part, when I
have to buy, is to see how prices increase each and every time.
Understandably, this is the reason why I regard this bag of thread as such a welcome gift. It felt like Christmas.
Before I received this quilt, I had a whole week with no quilting and as much as I enjoy this hobby, I was grateful for this break as it coincided with the final week of the US Open. How good was this? For the semi-final of the men’s game, I even got up at 2 a.m. to watch…. Needless to say, I had a long afternoon nap later in the day.
This
quilter didn’t like the outcome of her disappearing 9-patch but I liked it, it
had that old-time charm to it.
I made good use of our load-shedding schedule this week. I was able to wash all the windows over two days and on the third day, I cleaned our Lapa area just in time for the first day of Spring.
With all
the modern quilts done I also got back to my regular quilting and first up was
this half-square triangle quilt which needed only an edge-to-edge design.
I received the first of these 5 quilts on 25 July of this year and after doing the first one, trying to sense the picture the seller had in mind, I had to adapt to her desires which were mostly straight lines with the odd curve.
Initially, I
thought, great, it would be easy, very little planning needed but I never
anticipated how boring this would become.
Whenever I
have to interrupt my quilting process to do other things, I usually look forward
to getting back to the frame but after doing 60 or so straight lines, knowing I
have to return to more straight lines, was somewhat of a deal breaker. I think what I’m trying to say, is that I
could have finished these faster if I didn’t so much look up to the following straight lines.
With this
top, however, I noticed possible problems beforehand when I laid the top out
on the bed. See the little pleats
around the curve? These can become major
issues when being quilted. I decided to
plan my lines to match the pleats and instead of going across them, I took the
quilt off the frame several times to turn it and be able to work with the wrinkles and from the centre outwards.
Finally done with all 5 and now I do believe at least my quilting life can return to normal as the seller is currently in Fiji until the end of September; these first 5 were simply experiments to see if anyone would be interested.
This photo
shows some of the straight lines going in different directions.
