One-Block Wonder quilt- almost done

All I have left is the border and the binding. I hung it up to see how all the quilting of the hexagons looked, and would you believe, you can't see a thing! Oh well. I did end up ripping the stitches out of seven hexagons from the first two rows I quilted and redoing them. And after I said I wasn't going too! Since the variegated thread isn't going to show up, I may just do a simple meander on the borders. Picture coming soon. I put the camera in a safe place......

Wednesday - quilting and such

Ugh, now I remember why I've been sending out my quilts to be quilted all these years. It is dang hard squeezing all that fabric through the little throat of the machine. I started a little to the side of the middle, so that when I get all the way to the end and have to do the other side, I'll have a little less than half to go. That's my little psych trick. The bad thing is that I was very rusty on the first row, but 3 rows later, I'm getting a little creative, getting into the groove, and it looks better. Oh well. I'm not taking anything out now! And at least the quilt will be DONE sooner rather than later. I don't know of any long-arm quilter who doesn't have a backlog of many months. My favorite long-arm quilter has had Will's college quilt for almost a year now. And he's going to be a sophomore next month!!

Tomorrow we go pick up Mae at camp. I can hardly wait to see her. Last night was the toga party and they had a Hawaiian luau on Monday.

Yesterday I took the train to Hoboken to meet Bill for dinner and then the Yankee game. We took the ferry over to Manhattan - wish I had thought to take a camera, it was breathtakingly beautiful outside. I'm not a fan of skyscrapers and the whole urban/city look, but it was a glorious day and the sunlight reflecting off the mirrored buildings was pretty spectacular. We went into Manhattan and ate at Harry's at Hanover Park - it's right smack in the financial district. OMG, what a dinner. If you go on a Wednesday, their special for the past 40 years has been Beef Wellington. Needless to say, that's what we got and it was to die for. Before that, we had this out-of-this-world mushroom cavatelli with truffle oil. Not needed at all, but someone's eyes were bigger than his stomach, was the canadian bacon, and the spring lobster rolls. By the time the entree arrived, we were pretty stuffed, and neither of us could finish the beef. We had a bottle of wine with dinner and a bottle of dessert wine after while we sat and talked. Actually the dessert wine came after we decided to skip the game altogether. Bill gave the tickets to the waiter who scrambled to find someone to go with him! We had such a wonderful relaxing dinner and took our time walking back to the ferry. The return ride was just as delightful watching the shadows and golden glow of the setting sun slide across the buldings. The wind was fierce, but I just wrapped my hair up with a clip. I told Bill that if Mom were here, she would be moaning for a toboggan for her head, hahahaha (wind headaches, you know).

Machine quilting class

Saturday I attended a class on Machine Quilting with the Bernina BSR foot. I went with Sherry, Gloria, and Teresa from my quilt guild. Wish I had taken a camera to show what the classroom looked like. There were about 20 women and two teachers in a large classroom. 4 people sat at each table which was large enough for your machine and all the other stuff like fabrics, battings and threads. The BSR is a stitch regulator that helps to keep the stitch length consistent while machine quilting. If you've ever machine quilted, you know how difficult it is to regulate the length of the stitch with the speed of the machine while still keeping track of your sewing design. I must say, I'm loving my new Bernina 440 for this very reason. So we started off very simply with the basic meander and then a wide meander.


Next I did a looping meander and some meandering peacock leaves.


Here is a meandering leaf, peacock feathers (my favorite), and hosta leaves on the right.


We did some other stitches similar to these, all free-motion designs, just to get comfortable with moving the fabric and following a mental design. That was the morning class. We had a quick lunch and then went on with the afternoon class. Here we learned quite a bit about different threads and how to use them successfully. Some of this info I already knew, but working with metallics and then using thicker threads for bobbin work were new to me. Here I experimented with metallic thread. I outlined the flowers and then just kind of free-motioned around them to emphasize their shape. This was pretty easy since it's almost like scribbling or doodling with an outline to go by. The metallic thread is a copper color. I probably should have used a contrasting color for it to show up better.


Here is the back side of the flowers. I used a variegated red in the bobbin. I love this side much more than the front! I'm a bit irritated that the teacher didn't have us put a real backing on the sample (this is just the batting layer), because I could have used this for something.


All in all, it was a good class just because I now feel empowered to create even more with my machine. It missed being a great class because it needed a bit more organization and focus - the teacher had us bring fabrics that were never used and the project that was mentioned, she didn't give a pattern for. Also, something should be done about the student who monopolizes class time with conversations about their/someone else's health, where they live/vacationed, other classes they've taken, "organizations" they belong to, and other mindless chatter. That is so annoying, especially when the teacher herself gets sucked into it.