Another colourwash quilt

I welcomed this quilt, although it was almost identical to the one I finished on 3 June, as an edge-to-edge design was just what I needed after spending nearly a full week on the previous chevron custom quilt.  This quilter had the quilt already quilted by someone else, was not satisfied, decided to unpick, for me to redo.

With hubby playing golf on Sunday mornings (in this bitterly cold weather we now have), I cleaned and oiled my machine and decided to spend a quiet morning by myself (and the pets) and do this one.

Queen-sized Chevron quilt

 I had a great deal of fun working on this one.  I recently joined Susan Smith from Stitched by Susan on one of her podcasts, and as usual with any new online class, video, or podcast, I learned something new.

Susan discussed many topics, but one thing stuck with me……” deliberate practice”.  She talked about how we won't all get some shapes or motifs correct and then get disheartened and give up, and she challenged us to do what we struggle with on an actual quilt and deliberately practise.

Now I was never satisfied with my pebbles in a straight line, random pebbles I manage perfectly, but oh dear, don’t have these lined up in a row.

With this quilt, it was now or never, and I chose to do heaps of pebbles, and I must admit it did get better.  Still not perfect, but way better than I used to do it.

Somehow, I also chose the perfect combination of motifs; it went fast, filled the spaces in the quilt and gave a pleasing end result.  However, in the border, I had a motif that I hated midway through the quilt and then simply had to plough on, which is never fun.  The rest of the quilt was a breeze.

No good deed goes unpunished

I’ve heard this saying so many times and didn’t quite get it until this quilt arrived.  This, along with the previous one, came when I already had enough quilts to keep me busy for a couple of weeks.  The quilter, leaving for Australia at the beginning of July, asked if I could quilt these, and initially, I refused, but later felt guilty, thinking how neatly she made them, how eager she was to gift them, and I agreed.

I did the previous one for her brother with no problems whatsoever, BUT instead of laying my 3 layers out, as I always do, I simply assumed this quilt could be loaded exactly as the previous one.  Big mistake!!  I got to roughly 2 inches of the bottom edge and realised the backing was too small.  I know backings can be joined on the longarm, but I didn’t want a seam in the backing.

I therefore spent a whole weekend and a day just unpicking.  No more feeling sorry for or pushing someone up in my quilting line-up.  I’ve learnt my lesson.

Quilt for Henri

This quilt was made by one of our younger generation quilters. She and her boyfriend will be leaving for Australia at the beginning of July. They’ll be living with their host family/employers on a farm, and I guessed this quilt was for the host family’s little son.

Squares in autumn colours

This quilt has a sad history. The maker quilted in a group with a good friend, but the friend died during COVID-19. The maker then decided to finish some of her projects. This was the first one I got.

Squares and rectangles in tan

 This is the second of the edge-to-edge quilts I popped on before the partially done custom quilt. It's day one of doing this, and this is already my second quilt for the morning. I’m starting to feel better about my time management, but alas, I don’t have dinner planned for tonight. There is always just one spanner in the works.

Blues for a baby boy

I am inundated with quilt work and stress about the number of quilts piled up in the one guest bedroom.  I don’t sleep well, wake up tired, get up and quilt in the wee hours of the morning, and still the requests come in.  I never go back to sleep once I’m awake, but yesterday I think my body just rebelled and said “no more”.  I woke up at 02:45, stayed awake and alert until 5am, then crashed.  Got back into bed and slept for another hour and a half.  It helped!

When a couple of edge-to-edge quilts came my way, I was glad for this finish fast and at least I feel the pile is getting smaller.  I took a partially done custom quilt off the frame to try and finish a couple of the edge-to-edge quilts, and this was the first one.

All red and white quilt

This quilt arrived at an extremely busy time in my life. So much is happening, and I don’t get to do as much quilting as I would like to. My youngest granddaughter, who stays with us after pre-school, now comes out earlier as the older classes are busy with exams. My mornings, therefore, are much shorter. Hubby is finally finished with the renovations inside the house and is now waterproofing the roof. 

On Wednesday, I finally had the skylights (there are three rather dark areas in the house) I so badly wanted installed. Then, we are expecting workers to fit new windows in the kitchen and replace the two wooden back doors with glass doors. When it rains, the wood swells, and we struggle to close the doors. So, the glass doors should eliminate that problem. (They never came this week...ughh!)

Furthermore, either one of us must always be on chicken duty.  House hen still threatens to kill the little frizzle, and we dare not leave them unattended. I just have too few hours in a day to do all my household chores and get a fair amount of quilting done, too.

This morning, I started quilting at 02:20 while hubby and the pets were still asleep in order to make some progress, as I’ve been working on this quilt for a whole week. The kids came over for Father’s Day as DIL made us lunch.  Needless to say, I took a well-deserved nap afterwards, but was able to take this all red and white quilt off the frame and pack it to be returned.

Wholecloth

 This was from a quilter whose friend wanted a solid white quilt, which she plans to gift along with a blue and white Peaceful Star quilt to go in the centre of the bed as a finishing touch.

I don’t design the inside of these solid-colour quilts (this is a different skill level), so I offered to do an edge-to-edge design.

Colourwash quilt

The maker of this quilt is the same lady who made the beautiful runner I so much enjoyed working on.

Because of all the different printed fabrics in the centre, I opted for an edge-to-edge design with just a little detail in the sashing and border.

Table runner

I get to see many beautiful quilts and as many pretty fabrics, but occasionally I get this one quilt that rings all my bells.  I received a parcel with two quilts, but could not get batting locally. I did not open it immediately as I had a couple of quilts already open, just waiting for batting. Being bored one weekend, I gave in to the urge to open the parcel and saw this absolutely stunning table runner.  It was small enough for me to decide to use some of my own remnant batting and get going with this.

Not being in a hurry to quilt anything else, I had time to think about the design and motifs and took my time deciding on this.  Most of the time, I feel rushed to finish a quilt to satisfy the customer, eagerly waiting for their completed product.  This little runner is a perfect example of what can be done when one is not rushed to finish.

Sadly, I finished this way too fast, due to the small size, and now have to wait for batting to do another quilt.