Becky's quilt obsession

The V & T wall hanging was finished for our trip to Carson City, NV, last week. We had a good time, and I , of course, found time to play at a quilt shop in Gardiner, NV.The wall hanging was part of the silent auction, and it brought $125. When making it, I tried using a wool batting as well as a thin cotton batting on the bottom. It certainly made everything puffy. I really hate it when pictures sag. I quilted this on my DSM as the big needles on Black Bart would have torn holes in the pictures. I know a lot of people don’t quilt in pictures, but I like the look of outlining the major lines in the photos. I took beautiful pictures of Gold Hill and Virginia City, but now can’t find them on my computer. I hate it when I do that. I made a new folder for them, but where did it end up? Happy quilting, Becky

Where did September go? I’m sure there must be more of it left somewhere! Yes, I finished the monster other person’s UFO. I did the binding by sewing the back from the front. I even glued it down, but I’m still not happy with how it turned out. I still had to do a lot of resewing.  I haven’t found a foot for the Bernina that let’s me open the ditch as wide as I would like on the binding. I’ve tried the new ditch attachment for the walking foot, and it didn’t help. If it hadn’t been so large, I would have turned it by hand. This is as far as  I am on the donation quilt for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad Symposium next week. It only needs a small border – I’m debating between the red and the yellow. The yellow is a subtle tone-on-tone, but the red has trains on it. Every other piece of fabric in it is train fabric, so I’m leaning towards the red. It doesn’t show very much, but each of the railroad crossing blocks have red lights under the white crosses. I’m hoping it is a ...

I’m having an attack of ADD. I have too many projects in process. I kinda like it that way! This is the first project. It needs to be finished ASAP as it is supposed to be auctioned Friday. This was a top donated to my SIL’s foundation, Friends’ United. They provide teaching instruction for teachers and supplies for students in Honduras. This project was a challenge! It started with the backing made out of 3 pieces of the blue fabric. It was sewn together by hand, the shrunken selvages still attached. I sewed them again on my DSM, then trimmed the selvages.  I loaded it, and it was nice and square on Black Bart. Then I started to load the top. It was a very friendly top. The blue border was “gathered” in, and one side was 4” longer than the other side. It had cornerstones that had a cut out corner for the white border. I ended up removing all 4 blue borders and the cornerstones, measuring them by the center of the quilt, then reapplied them. There was enough length that I used j...

The picture above, left, has now become the picture on the right, so the back art is now finished. I hope I feel good enough tomorrow to load the front, bottom left, and the back on the quilting machine. I'm in a quandary how to quilt it. I was going to quilt it following the piecing lines, such as Mary http://blog.maryquilts.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/DSCN7803.JPG has done on the Heartstrings Happy blocks, but my center patches are 6" rather than the usual 4", so I thought I would have to quilt in the centers. Then the border is 8 1/2", so now what should I do? The train fabric has little swirls with 4 dots, almost like a bass cleft, including the border fabric. I suppose I could fall back on my swirls templates, but they will really mask the train blocks, and seem to make a quilt less puffy than I would like. Maybe I should try a panto?? Any comments /ideas would be helpful. DH asked if I was binding it all on by machine, but I think I want to hand tu...