Quilt Barn Trail

It's finished! My oldest UFO is finished! If you've been following along, then you know I started this quilt on May 18, 2011, as a project for an online class I took from the former Quilt University, now doing business as Academy of Quilting. My class, "Quilt your Favorite Photos" was taught by Betty Alofs. While perusing that website, I realized that the class is still available on demand.

It was actually the second quilt I started for the class. The first quilt was a little too complicated for me, a beginner at the time, and so I selected a different photo. The original quilt ended up as an "orphan block" donation to a woman who took a treadle sewing machine to the Burning Man festival and set up shop allowing folks to sew quilts. Isn't it interesting where our creations end up sometimes?

The pieces were all in place, and so yesterday's task was to quilt in the details. The batting was spray basted to the quilt top, but I didn't add the quilt back until almost all of the quilting was complete. I quilted siding onto all the structures.

Added some detail to the cupola. The roof was a corrugated metal roof, and after this picture was taken, I added some straight line quilting there.

Then I added more siding and "shingles" to the red structure, bricks to the chimney, and stitched in window panes.

Then, I added trunks and branches to the trees and after this picture was taken, added in some green for texture.

All that was left then was to quilt in some grass and the stems and leaves for the sunflowers. That serves the function of quilting, but it's really something on the order of free motion machine embroidery.

And then it was ready to have the quilt back added. My little cat was helping me the whole day.

For the quilt back, I selected this wheat fabric. It seemed like the best choice from my stash.

While the batting was adequately quilted to the top, I quilted in the suggestion of clouds in the sky to anchor the back in place as well.

And then it was ready for trimming and binding.

For the binding, I selected this branding iron fabric I picked up somewhere along the dusty trail...Wyoming, possibly? I looked back through some old blog posts trying to figure out where I'd purchased this, but couldn't find it.

This morning I was up bright and early to finish it. As a reminder, here is the original photograph:

And here is my finished quilt. Ta-Da!

It feels pretty darned good getting this one off my list of UFO's. It measures 13 x 19 inches. You wouldn't think a quilt so small could take 5 1/2 years to complete. I was going for a new world record. And that makes my hand quilting project, Mumm's the Word my longest running UFO. It was started in August of 2012.

At least I'm actually working on it, and not letting it sit on the back burner as the barn quilt did for so long.

There's just one tip I want to pass along to you today. Remember me whining about how hard it was to thread that 60/8 needle with the Invisifil thread? Well...smart friend of the blog Nancy E. suggested holding a little square of white cardboard behind my needle, and so I gave it a try. Here's how the needle looked (if you could actually get this close with your eye):

You can see the eye, but you can see how it also blends in with the foot at the back...also, note the blur. The camera was a little too close, but that's kind of how it looks to my eyes as well. So, enter a little slip of white paper and the eye becomes much easier to see.

Cool! And that worked great! Thanks for that suggestion, Nancy! It made a big difference.

Since I was up at 4:00 a.m., chomping at the bit to get at that quilt binding, I'm probably going to go back to bed. As for the rest of the day, I'll be adding more flour and water to my seed culture today. When I looked at it this morning, it had risen at least 50%. The top of the tape marks where it started yesterday.

Sorry for the blur...like I said, it was early. Also, there were bubbles visible, indicating that indeed, the starter is fermenting. That's exactly what it's supposed to do. I took a whiff of it since I was warned it would give off a bad smell. It wasn't too heinous, but less than appetizing. It's supposed to smell better within a day or two.

Also today, I'll be making up the first embroidered block for the Summer Holiday quilt...this one:

It's a combination of embroidery and machine applique.

There is snow in our forecast for this afternoon...it'll be the first snow of the season. Apparently, winter is here. It's a good day to stay inside and keep warm.