Block by Block

Good Sunday morning, my friends! I so enjoy our morning chats, especially because I get to do all the talking. Yesterday was my day to scale Mt. Laundry, and I'm happy to say that there's nothing on the calendar for today except to get on with my quilting. 

So let's talk about the quilting, shall we? It was after lunch before I was able to make my way to the quilting machine. I'd say I was being super lazy, but actually, I was dragging my feet. With a whole month gone by since I said I was going to start quilting Waste Not Whatnots, it isn't surprising that I took more time than expected to get started on it. As of today, I'm instituting the "one-hour rule," which means I'll set a timer for one hour, and then quit when time is up. I can quilt for longer if I want to, but one hour is the minimum. I've recently discovered this tactic, and it's a good one for those projects where motivation is an issue.

When it comes to this quilt, I'm dragging my feet because I have so many ideas about what to do. It's hard to know where to start. So, choosing a thread color is the first step. I'm going to quilt all the blocks in this pastel variegated thread. It's one of those discontinued Coats & Clarks threads...40 weight, if memory serves.

Although I already had a bobbin partially wound, I'm not going to use it on the bottom. For the bottom, I'll use this smoky monofilament.

I've used a couple of different brands of monofilament, and this one from Superior has performed the best in my sewing room.

So...needle threaded, bobbin in place...let's check our tension. I like to flip the excess backing fabric over the edge of the batting for this. Top tension looks good.

The bottom thread is a little hard to see in this image, but it looks good too.

So, here we go. I'm doing different dot-to-dot motifs in the quilt blocks. They're mostly made up from bonus triangles, and so dot-to-dot is an easy way to cover a lot of ground quickly. I like doing that little swirl in a pinwheel. If you get them going in the right direction, you can make them look like little hearts.

I've gone through my Pinterest saves looking for appropriate motifs. I'm treating the blocks and sashings as separate "entities." By that I mean that there are wide black sashings where I want to do something a little fancier. This being a "trashy" quilt, it's a good opportunity to try some new things and to practice. The block below didn't end up quite as I envisioned it, but it's good enough. Those little squares are only about an inch.

Here's another one that didn't end up quite as I envisioned it. This is partly because I'm trying not to cut threads more than necessary. Sometimes the stitching covers an area the changes the look of the motif.

The next two blocks are each about three inches square. On the left, I did an upsy-downsy-insy-outsy thing. On the right, some terry twists. 

At that point, I had several of the center blocks quilted. The rest are all arranged around the outer edge. I decided to switch to a darker, more colorful variegated thread here. I wanted to do some quilting in the black sashings, and so I want bolder color there. This is another of the discontinued Coats & Clark's "Star" line of threads. These were so pretty, and I'm sad they were discontinued.

Okay, and so this was another motif I took off Pinterest. It's easier than it looks. You stitch two petals, then a loop for the flower center, and then fill in the rest of the petals around the loop.

Where I rounded a corner, I made a little stylized leaf.

First, I stitched around two sides, and then added the third side later.

The bobbin thread started giving me trouble here. It was breaking every few stitches. I tried most everything I could think of, but then ended my day by cleaning and lubricating the bobbin casing. Of course, I should have done that at the outset, but didn't. I'm hoping that will take care of the problem, but I haven't done any more quilting since then. If the problem continues, I might have to slit my own throat. If I'm not here blogging tomorrow, you can assume that's the reason.

There's nothing but quilting (NBQ) on today's agenda. I'll start the clock at one hour and see how far I can get. At the end of an hour, I'll either continue quilting, or I'll move into the sewing room to start sewing together a quilt top. I'm starting to choose my projects based on which is the oldest. Looking at my list of WIPs, next on the list will be to sew together the Pieces of the Past quilt. That will involve quite a bit of sewing since there are 16 crazy quilt blocks around the outer edge. I'm still making peace with that quilt for being so complicated at the finish. Possibly, I'll choose something else. 

Okay, so there's plenty of sewing ahead. But first, it's Sunday. That means blueberry oatmeal pancakes for breakfast. I'm heading there next.