Saturday, April 26, 2014

Quilt Progress

This post is much later than I had planned on because the blog was acting up - it wouldn't open anything so that I could work on it - the post that I had started and when I started a new one I could not type in it! Oh well . . .  it's working now!

It has been a busy time for me lately and I think it will slow down for sewing and quilting the next several weeks because I will be working a lot of days (I'm a substitute teacher so work is here and there). Anyway, I wanted to show the progress that I have made.

PROJECT #1 Triangle Quilt Along
This is the end week 5 for the triangle quilt along. I had a post almost ready last week but never got it finished! Here is what I have done for the last several weeks. During week 2 we cut all of our triangles and laid them out.

Week 3 brought the sewing together of triangles into rows. I only managed to finish 7 of the 12 rows during the week.


For week 4, we were to sew the rows together to have a completed top. Since I had 5 rows of triangles left to sew first, I wasn't sure that I would make the deadline. But hooray, I did manage to finish sewing the triangles into rows then sewing all the rows together.


For week 5/6 , we need to quilt and bind our quilt. I have my binding ready and I'm all ready to quilt it except that I cannot decide how I want to do it. Most people are quilting in straight lines on each side of the seams. Because it's already angular, I thought maybe a different design with some small curves might be nice. 

I'm open to suggestions for quilting! The goal is to have it finished by May 3.

PROJECT #2 Weighted Blanket
The blanket that I started had to be put on hold. Somehow I hurt my back and that made it difficult to handle the weight. I did get to finish the weighted lap blanket and here is a picture of it. I hope to start again soon on the larger blanket since my back is doing much better.


PROJECT #3 Quilt Doodle Block of the Month

I put this project on hold until after Easter because of the next project. I have begun piecing this month's block. I would like to have it finished by the end of April so I will be ready for May's block.


PROJECT #4 T&F's Quilt
This is what I spent a lot of time on for about 10 days before Easter. My friend Angie, who is also a quilter, and I made a quilt together. You see, her daughter is married to my son. So we decided to make them a quilt and started it last fall in their color choice of gray and yellow. We made an easy chevron - she did the left half and I did the right half. After we had it quilted, we divided up the rest of the work. She joined the sides together and put on the binding. I put the 2 borders on and made some shams and throw pillows to go with it. We both went to see them on Easter weekend and took it to them. We were very pleased with how it turned out and so were they.
Pillow sham

Border and close up of quilting

I made the small throw pillow and the one on the right.
It looks great on my bed!
 You can't really see the quilting in the gray fabrics but they kind of echo the feathers in the yellow. 

Thursday, April 17, 2014


Triangle Quilt Along

Week 2 we cut our triangles - 206 of them! Here are mine.

Next we laid out our triangles in 12 rows with 17 triangles in each one.
 
 I started sewing mine but wasn't really happy with it. So I snapped a few black and white pictures to see what stood out. I had an area with no darker reds and an area with too many darker reds. This picture is after I was satisfied with the new layout.
  1. Here is some chain piecing.


              
 Can you see the little pins? I was having trouble keeping up with which triangle was supposed to be pointed up and which needed to be pointed down so this is the system I devised. I pinned only the odd ones on the straight side, moving the pin to the right a little on each pair. This row has been sewn in pairs with the extra guy on the top. It has really been a big help to mark this way. I used glass head pins in case I accidentally ironed over them.



This is when I was halfway finished piecing the rows. 

Tomorrow or Saturday I'll have another post with week 4. This is the post that I forgot to post last week!

Have a great day on Friday!