Quilting a Garden

When I came upstairs to write this post, I left Sadie snuggled up in a quilt. It's been raining almost non-stop for the past two days. She knows what to do.

As expected, I finished off the Tucson Tabby yesterday morning.

When its turn comes up to be sewn into a quilt top, I have some cute fabrics to use. These are both regional prints that I picked up in our travels. The cactus fabric on top came from Quilter's Market quilt shop in Tucson. That was a long time ago, but it looks like the quilt shop is still in business. I'll use that on the back.

The one at the bottom was picked up at Quiltique in Henderson, Nevada. I remember choosing it because we'd been seeing blooming cactus everywhere. I'll give the quilt a narrow pink border, and then use that one as a larger border on the quilt top.

So I was all set to trace out the next block for Calendula Patterdrip. If I'd been thinking ahead, I would have realized that tracing was the least of my worries for this block. Here's the picture from the pattern cover. It's actually Blocks 7 and 8 combined. Before I can do anything, I'm going to have to piece together something on the order of 12 blocks. And, clearly, that's going to take some time.

Not to worry. I decided to rearrange my list of projects and work on a different one while I take time to create Calendula Patterdrip's background. 

Instead, I'll work on the first block for this new project: A Joyful Journey. Someone sent me most of the embroidery patterns. I apologize for not remembering who it was. If it was you, then thank you. It's a delightful series of patterns...one for each month...from Kathy Schmitz. You can find all the monthly patterns right here. The finished quilt pattern is downloadable for free. Here's how the finished quilt looks:

I'll probably end up setting mine differently, but I wanted you to get an idea what I'm working on. It was tempting to start with the month we're in...June...but then I didn't think I would be doing every month during the month we were in, and so I settled on starting at the beginning, with January. I first cut all the backgrounds and stabilizer pieces, and then traced it.

It'll be worked mainly in black floss, but there are a few pops of color mixed in.

It was time to head off to my pedicure then, but I went to work on the quilting when I got home. My quilt, Garden Sunshine, seems mostly white to me...

and so I'm quilting it with all white thread. I'll use a YLI machine quilting thread on top and a Bottom Line thread in the bobbin.

So I set the machine up and adjusted my tension, and then I was ready to get to work. My wrist was feeling fun until I spread my fingers wide to begin quilting. When I realized I was going to have problems, I put a splint on my wrist, and that allowed me to work relatively pain free. 

It's not a good solution, however. I'm using Machingers gloves, and I can't quilt without them. The velcro on the splint kept catching on the right-hand glove. Also, I have to take the gloves off to do anything that requires fine motor coordination, such as burying threads or threading a needle, and so that just added another layer of frustration to the mix. If I'm going to quilt, I'm going to need to use the splint. I think today, I'll try it without a glove on that hand. It seems the splint might give me enough gripping power on its own. It'll be an experiment.

Okay, so I went to work doing what Angela Walters calls dot-to-dot quilting. I just made curved lines from intersection to intersection. If you plan your work right, you can do the whole thing without cutting thread.

Here's how that looks from the back.

Moving to the right, I was going to quilt a sun block. I had an idea for this that required I hit the center point over and over again as I went. So I lined up the ruler to find the center.

And then made a little mark with the pointy end of my Hera marker. 

And that gave me the guidance I needed.

Here's how that looks from the back.

Moving to the right, I went back to the dot-to-dot method.

Here's how that looks from the back.

Just then, Smitty showed up. He wanted to look out the top floor window to see if there was anything worth killing outside. It gives him the cat's-eye-view, being up so high. It was still raining though. Bummer.

He was encouraged to use a different window. I still wanted to do one more block before I quit for the day. For the applique blocks, I'll outline the applique and then add in some details. For this one, I added the flight path of the bee. Also, I added in some veins on the leaves.

In case you're wondering, I used Angelina fiber to create the bee's wings. Here's how this looks from the back.

Okay, and that was a row of blocks, which was my goal. I'll save the quilting on the rows of flying geese until the end since those will all be quilted using a single motif. I'll get another row quilted today.

The rain stopped briefly, and I went out to see if I had any peony blossoms. This isn't the one I've been watching, but it decided to pop out first. It isn't fully opened, but I expect it will be before the end of the day.

I checked on the cruel poppy. It isn't give me any reason to be optimistic.

And then I noticed more color on the poppy to its right.

We need some warmth and sunshine badly, but we won't get it today. Or tomorrow. Or even the next day. Looking at the forecast, it looks like we're in for rainy weather through Wednesday. Sheesh. I can't remember when we've had such a rainy spring. It doesn't even seem as if we've had a spring. We're going from Winter straight to Summer...and Summer is looking a little questionable at this point. Fingers crossed it gets better.

Okay so on today's agenda, I'll take the first stitches on January's block for A Joyful Journey, and then I'll get back to my quilting. My goal is to quilt a row of blocks per day. If I can do that, it should be ready for binding by next weekend. When I've finished the day's quilting, I'll start making the background for the next Calendula Patterdrip blocks.