It’s September and in a few short weeks, it will be autumn.
I really miss my local quilt shop.
When it closed, I pretty much stopped quilting for a while. It was so nice to go into the shop, find the fabrics, threads, and batting for a project, check out right then and there, carrying my treasures home the same day. Most of the time, while in checkout, I received useful tips for my project from the owner or other experienced quilter working there.
I am on my own now with very little experience and only books, magazines, and online videos to help me.
The actual quilting part is daunting for me as I do not have a long-arm machine and cannot seem to get the hang of free-motion quilting. Most of my quilting is in the ditch or hand quilting. And then, there is the scariest thing of all … the binding.
Luckily, I found an online video called The Ultimate Binding Tutorial posted by Missouri Star Quilt Company. I watch it on my nook while I am following along, step by step. I have done two projects using that video and, as long as I follow it exactly, they come out perfectly.
A shipment of fabrics I ordered for a quilt I planned arrived yesterday, only weeks after I ordered it. For this quilt, I am using a panel on each side of the quilt. I also found a coordinating fabric with smaller framed scenes that I will fussy cut for blocks around the panels. The sashing will all be done in black. The border is another coordinating print and I’ll finished with black binding. I need it to be as simple because I need it finished before October. The quilting will take most of the time at my skill level.
After that, I have two must-finish-before-Christmas quilts.
One quilt is a Christmas tree quilt that has been in the works for a long time. I started it, and then packed it away. I just pulled it out and discovered that the stitches I made with the sewing machine are too small and I think the high loft batting is just too puffy for this quilt top. I only quilted a few blocks. I am trying to pull them out carefully and plan to replace the high loft with a low loft batting. It should make a huge difference. It just looks messy to me now.
Well, I’ve got to get started!
Fran Beally's Blog 