Purple, Purple and more Purple!

Want to see what I've been working on all weekend? A purple quilt!  My friend Paula's mother-in-law passed away almost a year ago.  She was a quilter.  Paula found this quilt top along with the backing fabric in a bag and I volunteered to quilt it for her so that she would have it finished for the anniversary of her death next month.  I found the fabric to make the binding and bought the batting and finally got started Saturday afternoon.  I tell you, now I know why it is SO important to press your squares after you have pieced them going a certain way!  It sure has been a challange getting this quilted when the blocks aren't exactly square and the seams not pressed properly.  It has been a wonderful learning experience.  Here is the quilt top layed out for the basting with safety pins.

I've worked on it all weekend, today ALL day except to eat lunch and dinner. I've finished the quilting and have made the 30 yards of binding.

Here is  a close up of the binding.  I couldn't believe I found something that would match so well.

Here is what the quilt looked like when I finished quilting.

The back is the solid dark purple that was used on the blocks.  It seems that the blocks were made in 1986 since 2 of them were dated with the person's name that made the block.  The story is that Rita's (Paula's mother-in-law) quilting group made the blocks and then they were put into this quilt.  Several are signed by the person's name and others aren't.  It is pretty remarkable for me to be working on something like this.  I feel like I've finishing up a piece of history.  I wonder if the other ladies that worked on it are still living and do they wonder what happened to the quilt?  Some of the blocks were hand stitched and others were machine stitched.

I hope to get to work on it a bit more next weekend, but if not it will have to wait until the middle of October since I am leaving on October 6th for Porto Portugal for a work meeting....and a bit of R & R with my husband since the 8th will be our 34th wedding anniversary!

After this quilt is finished, I'm going to finish the Mama's Boy quilt I started earlier this year!  I'm really not turning into a quilter...full time at least, I will get back to garments one day!!

Later!



Sorry for the massive absenteeism!!

I have been very, very absent from posting, not sewing...but posting. 

I left off after I wore the dress I had been working on.  Since that time I have finished another dress, with the same pattern

AND took my trip to London!  We had a great time - we did have a chance to see the Grace Kelly exhibit

at the V & A.  It was wonderful. Sewing related, I went to a nice fabric store (I don't remember the name) I didn't buy anything there.  They did have the fabrics displayed a bit different than I've ever seen.  They had strips of the fabric hanging from  pants hangers and then those were on round racks with the price/content/location on a cardboard piece on the hanger.  If you wanted a swatch, you just cut a piece from the bottom.  All the actual bolts of fabric were stacked on top of each other along the walls.  Not the most appealing way to display, but efficient.  Then we went to the Liberty Dept. Store....beautiful fabrics!  I bought 3 different fabrics there and it was very hard to decide on just those 3 (limited luggage space).

Once home, I had to begin my next project...an A, B, C baby quilt

for my soon to be born Great Niece.  The shower is in 2 weeks and all I have left is to stitch the binding down. I just can't decide if I want to try the stitch in the ditch with invisible thread, or hand stitch it. I decided to hand stitch!  It came out really nice, for my first "real" quilt.  A few stitches are showing since I did the stitch in the ditch - I wasn't always in the ditch....I was even using my machine magnifying glass.

As soon as I finish this quilt, I'm going back to the "Mama's Boy" quilt that I started in January.  I feel more confident to be able to finish it now that I had success with the baby quilt.  I'm also taking a machine quilting class next Saturday.  It should really help me a lot.  I'm looking forward to the class so much.

One other thing that I almost forgot to mention was my first vintage machine that I purchased on E-bay from a seller in Canada a Bernina 121 born somewhere around 1957. She is a beaut and she purrs like a kitten. I have had some trouble with the stitches but I'm sure it is a threading problem.