Rainy Day Quilting

The weather in Northern California has been windy, foggy, rainy and just plain blustery.  It is so cold right now it will probably snow.  We have had electricity so what do you think I’ve been up to?  Quilting, of course. 

I taught myself some new things using some information from the internet and some from books I have.  I need some quilty things to hang on the walls here so I used one block from the quilt on the cover of Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting July/August 2009 issue.  Then I added a little appliqué from Barbara Brandeburg’s book Tried & True Cabbage Rose favorites (I would love to make every quilt in this book).  The technique I used to applique was from Edyta Sitar’s book Hop to It, she has some really clear instructions on machine applique with invisible thread.  Well, I have had a spool for years and never used it so I gave it a try and love how it works.  She uses a zig zag stitch set on 1 for width, 1 for length with the tension on 1 so that most of the clear thread goes to the back and you don’t see any bobbin thread on the front.  I used bobbin thread to match my background and the invisible thread is only on the front.

There are a lot of string projects going on in quilty blogland and some great tutorials so I had to test out the idea.  I needed to make a new table runner to replace my Christmas one so I got to work and made some string blocks.  I have also been wanting to make a house block with a quilt block in it.  So I got to work playing and this is what I came up with.  I am also trying something I saw somewhere else in quilty blogland and can’t remember where…I cut the batting and backing 1/4th inch wider than the front then attached the binding sewing 1/2 inch from the edge of the batting.  I made my binding 2 1/2 inches wide.  The end result is that when you fold the binding to the back there is more material in the binding making it feel fuller.  Really nice and it is not too much, so sewing it down is not hard at all.  The only other thing I did was to cut the batting corners off so the corners would fold nice and smooth.

I am really enjoying my rainy day quilting, but I do hope it doesn’t continue for a whole lot longer because my new heating mats came in and I really want to get out and work on my new garden.   All this rain is making some really pretty little mushrooms pop up every where though and the manzanitas are blooming, too.

Learn something new!

Ferne