faulker094

What started out in my mind as echo quilting on my "Contentment" quilt is really stippling, I guess.  And the stippling sometimes feels crippling as the end of my thumb has gone from normal to calloused to cracked callous.  OUCH! But I am making progress!  I have completed 2 outer borders, 2 corners, and I am most of the way through my 3rd border. What keeps me going?  DVD movies and political intrigue on TV (the former being less disturbing than the latter).  "Sully" (which is FABULOUS), "The Sound of Music," the second "Sex in the City" movie, "Bridget Jones' Diary" (oldie, but goodie), all the "Harry Potter" movies, "Beauty and the Beast"...I am enjoying going through my DVD shelves. Every time I show a picture of my half quilting hoop I get a lot of inquiries about where I got it.  It was many, many years ago (early 90's, I think).  It has "Grace" stamped on the inside.  I went to the Grace webs...

These are very poor quality pictures that I took late last night before going to bed following a long afternoon and evening of hand quilting.  I thought I would show you where I am in the process of quilting my "Contentment" quilt top. I am outline quilting every little piece, then echo quilting as a background fill. The quilt just seemed too busy to me to try and do anything more organized like background gridding or lines. It will look better after a good pressing...I am quilting on a hoop and have the top all wadded up in my lap as I make progress. I tried stretching it out on top of the TV table I am using to take these poor pictures. I started with the big 16-inch center block then proceeded into the twelve 10-inch surrounding blocks, heading  toward the borders. It is a lot of stitches!  I have almost burned through my first spool of YLI hand quilting thread (#002 Ecru) and several layers of skin on my right thumb and left index and middle fingers. It is pretty bor...

More recycling...I used up the rest of 3+ spools (and one white bobbin!) of my Mom's old polyester thread to baste my "Contentment" quilt.  She used to keep her spools of thread in a clear, large pickle jar on a sunny window shelf...over time, all the spools were naturally variegated!  I think this is the most I have ever basted any quilt top of any size...I don't want this sucker to shift while I am hand-quilting with a hoop!   There is a lot of turning that hoop while outline quilting around all these shapes! I watched my new Season One DVD of PBS's "Victoria" and re-watched Seasons Two and Three of "The Big Bang Theory" while doing all this basting. As I start hand quilting, I am enjoying a "Harry Potter" home film festival! Basting threads are pink, orange, teal and white... I have started to quilt the center, largest block.  I am outlining, then I am doing a close echo/fill.  It is the first time I have quilted like this, and...

Hopefully the light isn't a train at the end of the tunnel, LOL!  The two side borders are stitched, embroidered, soaked, pressed and ready to apply.  Only the top border stands between me and getting this quilt assembled and ready for quilting. I am waiting until all four borders are stitched before attaching to the body of the quilt. I spent some time over the weekend picking out the fabric bits for that final top border.  My "little bits" boxes make this process a little easier. I have two bits boxes for each color, one 4 x 6 inch size and a larger one that is 5 x 7 (boxes are photo boxes by Iris, available at JoAnn's).   When I first set up the bits boxes, I cut a rectangle, sloppily by hand with scissors, from favorite fabrics roughly 5 x 7.  Then every time I cut out a piece, the rectangle in the larger box gets smaller and little scraps start filling the smaller box. This works well for me and saves time.  Larger applique pieces like apples, pears, w...

The second border for "Contentment" is done!  This is the left border...it just needs to be dunked into water to soak out the glues.   And I am very close to being done with the third border, the right border.  It is a mirror image in design to the left border, but with different fabrics.  My husband was off yesterday and volunteered to be my third and fourth hands to snap a couple of "wild animal pics" of me actually taking stitches. Just a few more vines and leaves, a little embroidery and then this border with take a bath with the other one. The bottom border has been finished, lonely and waiting for a few weeks for some company. Once I soak the glue out of the side borders, I will trim all to size and attach them to the body of the quilt.  I am so excited! The top border contains wedding rings and more flowers and fruit. We put almost 5000 miles on the car in December and early January...I hauled these borders around with me, but did not have the time or en...

The bottom border for "Contentment" is hand-stitched, soaked and pressed, but not trimmed and attached yet.  I might wait until all four borders are done before I trim anything.  My little mathematical brain is a little distracted right now...better to be safe then sorry! These pictures aren't very good...I have both tops I am bordering laid out on the pool table as I ponder things.  My pieces of design wall are leaning up against furniture in my bedroom, upstairs.  I have got to figure out where and how to have my design wall down where the quilt cave is! And for my second project sprawling on the pool table, you won't believe one of my skinny stop borders I am employing in "Life's Little Treasures."   Some of you have been making these blocks in a larger size, one at-a-time, one day-at-a-time in 2016.  I just finished making 116 little versions of this hand-appliqued block in four days!  Now I just need to stitch them into strips and apply them to ...

After much moving things around, I finally settled on an arrangement for my center medallion block and my seventy-two LITTLE TREASURES hand applique blocks. The little blocks measure 6-inches finished (but can easily be scaled up larger), and the quilt top is 54-inches square... SO FAR. Patterns, both traditional and digital, for the blocks are available here . Now I am trying to figure out my options...I am thinking that I will apply another sawtooth border, but with 2-inch finished HST's instead of the 1-inch that I used around the center medallion. But then, what?!?  My mind is racing... It was interesting trying to get the blocks arranged.  I did not use seventy-two different background neutrals, so I had to worry about repeats being adjacent to each other.   I think I moved the flying pig around the most...due to the neutral fabric palette it was a little hard to balance the occasional bursts of brightness. It is busy without calming sashing, but I like that.  ...

I am so happy to have made decisions about the borders for "Contentment," my original quilt celebrating our marriage (our 23rd anniversary is on October 23).  I started this project just before our 20th anniversary.  Zeesh!  Birthing this project has been like having a baby...in slow motion! The first border has the pieces woven like a chain (my "chain and bull's eye" border...Steve calls it the "ball and chain border").  That seems appropriate for an anniversary quilt. I am calling the second border my "pop bead and bull's eye" border since Steve said it reminded him of a toddler's pop-together toys.  I could not make a decision about using one blue, so I used twenty-eight (stash justification at its BEST!) and almost as many purples. I felt the first border wasn't heavy or solid enough so I knew I wanted the second border to have the visual weight of a solid strip of color but be more interesting than that.   It's getting t...