PILLOW SHAMS

I got the pillow shams done for the people that bought the Floral Trails quilt. I used one of the new feet I bought the other day, the Edge Stitch foot, for the 'stitch-in-the-ditch' quilting.  

I'll be putting it all into the post tomorrow.

 

Good-bye quilt, live long and prosper.

NEW SALE

 Someone bought the Floral Trails quilt from Etsy.  They requested I make pillow shams to go with it.  I agreed to do that.  But I had to find the leftovers from the quilt.  I was pretty sure I still had them.  I remember trying to sell them on Instagram, but where were they now?

I looked and looked again.  After about 45 minutes I found them!  I cut out a bunch of strips to make 4-patches.  I need to make 63 4-patches for each sham.  My goodness, what was I thinking?

I made a little headway today.  Still more to go.

ON THE BRIDGE

I took Floral Trails around and took pictures of it, finally.

ONTO THE MACHINE

I spent most of the afternoon loading "Floral Trails" onto the machine.  It's bigger than I remembered.  The back is 95" wide by 105" long.  The quilt top is 87" wide by 102" long.  What was I thinking!?

It took a while to get it pinned onto the rollers - I ran out of pins and had to use my numbered flat flower pins.  I need to order some more tonight.

Then I struggled and fought with it trying to get the borders straight.  The inside of the quilt is made up of gazillions of 1-1/2" squares, then there's a 6" border around it.  I know I measured and cut the borders to the right length, but I think the squares are kind of drawing together.  I needed to stretch the insides, but not the borders.  It was interesting.  I've got the top pinned and basted.  Let's hope it's not this difficult the whole way down.  (Right).

Looks pretty straight!

I got out my new Lisa Calle's Circle Rulers.  Boy, they sure feel nice to the touch, I don't know why, but I'm thinking they are made from high quality acrylic.

I'm going to do a Baptist Fan in the center and Piano Keys in the borders. 

Here's a rare sight - the dogs sharing a bed:

Jax and Jelly

TOP DONE

I think I've done a lot of posts with that title - Top Done, but I need to do more.

I was putting the last of the borders on the Floral Trails quilt top and I figured I was going to run out of bobbin thread.  It always happens to me when I'm sewing a really long seam, and I get to the end and realize the bobbin thread ran out two miles back.  AAARRGH!

So since this one was pinned so precisely, I was paying attention and checking it regularly.

I was completely taken aback when I got to the end and went to snip the bobbin thread and there was none.  It had ended precisely one quarter inch after I had back stitched and ended.

Hallelujah!  I promptly went out and bought a lottery ticket because I knew the gods were smiling on me today!

That has never happened and I'm sure it will never happen again.

Too big for my wall

THIS WEEK

As another week draws to a close, and I have to go back to work tomorrow...

These are some of the things I worked on this week:

Splendid Sampler blocks---

This one took a while to complete, it was fun.

I got back around to working on the Floral Trails (it needs a real name) quilt blocks, and managed to finish them up on Sunday.  I put them up on the wall randomly and moved only two and I seem to be just fine with the way it looks.  I'll leave it there this week and see how I feel about it next time I see it.

The original plan was to add a plain 1" border then two rows of same size squares, randomly in light, dark, light, dark, and then a final border probably three inches.  

As it is now, with no borders, it's 90" by 75",  if I add all those borders it will be 102" by 87".

I'll have to give it some thought.  I'm tired of working on huge quilts.

I'm going to go watch the Oscars.  This is the first time in years that it has been on my day off.

BLOCKS 16 AND 17

From the Floral Trails collection: