A Day of Stitching

Quilting can be a pain in the neck...especially for me. I have a metal plate in my neck. It would be nice to say I got it from being some kind of superhero, but actually, it comes from my years as a competitive swimmer. Have you ever watched how a backstroker comes off the starting block?

You throw your head back and leap backwards as far as you can. Do that about a hundred million times in your life, and you'll give yourself a case of whiplash. As much as I try to relax my neck and shoulders, a day of stitching will send me looking for an ice pack to ice my aching neck and shoulders. Does this stop me from spending pretty much a whole day quilting? Not on your life. It actually only hurts when I stop and try to resume a normal posture. This is a minor inconvenience since 20 minutes of icing takes care of it. A small price to pay for a day of fun.

Here's what I did yesterday. I'm into the patchwork sections at the top and bottom of the quilt now. All of the longer green strips have more bird feet in them. For the smaller patchwork sections, I used Lori Kennedy's "Doodle Heart" design to quilt hearts into each one.

It's a surprisingly simple design, and I mastered it on my first practice try before moving onto the quilt. My quilting friend Marei and I were bemoaning the fact that this is not a continuous line design. In other words, each heart is stitched individually, and you must cut thread and bury your tails at the end of each. (I buried mine all at the same time.) Here's how it looks from the back.

I was thinking it would be possible to stitch this in horizontal rows using a little loopy heart between each one to connect them. I tried unsuccessfully to draw it out, but imagine using a heart similar to this one to connect a horizontal row of Doodle Hearts.

It could be done with a little practice, and it would be cute in a border or sashing. Something to ponder for future quilts.

So I finished all the smaller patches, and then I was ready to move on to the larger sections. I wanted to do some sort of flower filler there, and so I checked YouTube to find something I liked. I came up with this video for "Feathered Flower" by Amy Johnson.

If you can't see the video, click right here. 

This isn't so different from the Swirling Feathers I did for the free motion quilting sampler.

The difference is that Amy's design only includes two loops in the center, and she's not echoing around the feathers when she finishes them off. It seemed like a smaller design. My areas to stitch aren't large, so I opted for using Amy's design. It's a little hard to see on this first section since the fabric prints are fairly busy.

It might be easier to see from the back.

Here's a larger section with a less busy fabric.

I'm a little disappointed that it doesn't look more like flowers, but it's fine for a filler, and so I'm going to leave it and finish up the rest in the same way. When I stopped to ice my neck yesterday, I'd done two sections at the bottom left of the quilt. 

I should have time to finish off the last of the quilting today. And I snapped that image just before the quilt inspector showed up.

Today she's testing the quilt for snuggle-ability.

I give this quilt an A+ for snuggle-ability, Mom!

Here's how it's looking from the back. (I still need to outline the birds' wings.)

Today is a grocery shopping day. Word from our CSA farmers is that I can pick up 40 lbs. of Roma tomatoes from them tomorrow, and so I'm gathering supplies for a weekend of lotsa pasta sauce. It's a lot of work while I'm doing it, but so gratifying to see all those quarts of pasta sauce lined up on my pantry shelves. Also, the plums are ripe! I'll fit in some time for plum chutney while I'm at it.