Red and White

I showed a photo of my red and white quilt in progress over on the Book of Faces the other day and someone commented "cheer cheer the Red and the White" and I'm all "NO WAY José" (oh when the Saints go marching in...)

Anyway, this quilt.



This quilt was one. Big.  Mistake.

I meant to quilt straight lines one inch apart. Except the metal gauge on my walking foot is too long, sticks out into the throat space and just gets in the way so I decided to gauge it by the foot only and my foot only goes to half an inch. So I have stitch lines going this way and that. HALF AN INCH APART oh dear baby Jesus save me now.



Last night in a fit of shoulder pain, I switched it up a little and did something one inch apart and sod that bloody walking foot gauge. It looks good. Sloppy, but good.

In the meantime, the other 4/5 of the quilt is half an inch apart, and it's a 60 inch quilt.



Oh, and I should tell you that I went to the quilt shop yesterday to buy more thread because 750 metres of Aurifil 28 weight is never going to go very far. The quilt shop that is only open Tuesday to Saturday and I can only go on Saturdays because I don't have a car during the week. And I bought a shedload of fabric for a group quilt I am organising, and not one spool of thread. NOT ONE. By the time I realised it was 3.57 pm and I was 20 minutes away.

Yeah, so the quilting of this quilt is going really well.

On the other hand, the orange peels are looking fabulous.



Five days to finished quilting a 3/4 finished quilt; and trim, sleeve, bind and label both of them. Sir, can I get an extension please?*

* I know I should be quilting and not blogging, but I'm on a break, ok?

Orange Peel Special

My days are filled with cycling to work, work, cycling home, cooking dinner, gardening, household chores. My nights are filled with this:

Endless rows of this:

Backwards and forwards, trying to relax my shoulders, remember to use the knee lift, needle down, turn, one two three stitches, turn.  And do it all over again.

It took me ages to settle on a quilting design. The modern quilt group I go to asked me how I was going to quilt it, and I said "well, on the exhibition entry form, I used the words '... and the quilt is then heavily machine quilted'". I'd built a rod for my own back. But I like how it's turning out.

Of course, once this quilt is finished, I have another quilt to baste and quilt as well. For that one I've said 'The quilting design swirls through the leaves.' Shit. All in three weeks. No pressure or anything.