N Blu

Hey Everybody,

I'm glad you're back! I have good news! I finished  the second Craftsy BOM baby quilt. Yippeeee!

After having HELL with the previous one  I decided that I had to take action. Originally I had my vintage Singer 201 set up for FMQ-ing only, dropped the feed dogs and installed the darning foot on it as soon as I bought it a year ago. I remembered that dropping the feed dogs involved some kind of screwing, but didn't remember how. I looked it up in the manual and realized it  was quiet easy to do. So I raised the feed dogs back up and installed the second walking foot I bought for this machine and decided to stitch in the  ditch around the blocks. I also changed threads and matched the thread color to the fabrics. With that said I ended up re-threading the machine with every single block, but I didn't mind.  In her Craftsy free motion quilting a sampler class Leah Day suggested to use  Isacord polyester thread so I gave it a try. I only ordered white and blue, the 2 colors I wanted to use in this quilt. Bingo! It quilted beautifully, never broke and didn't have any problem with it whatsoever.
I also tried out the suggested Supreme Slider for the first time. When I begin free motion quilting with it someone asked me on Twitter if it makes a difference and I wasn't sure. But then at the end I  had to change bobbin and I only had a  little bit of quilting left so I didn't put the slider back on the machine and I felt the difference. I'm glad I used it because quilting was a lot easier with it. I taped it down as Leah suggested in her class and it was a breeze to quilt with.
I went pretty much with her suggestion for quilting, except for the wonky log cabin block where She quilted a giganto spiral and I decided to do concentric circles instead. I designed a very cool quilt in EQ7 and want to quilt that one with the concentric circles and wanted to try out how it works. I just got a jar lid and drew the first circle in the middle, than a bigger jar lid and drew a second circle, after that I pretty much had to eyeball it :) It came out fine with  a few corners in the beginning, but it's OK. It's not a show quilt anyways :) Again my Crayola washable markers didn't disappoint. They came out with very little washing with no problem.

Originally I wanted to finish this quilt by March  31 so I could link it  up in the First Quarter FAL 2013, but I had so much help from my kitties that I had to postpone the deadline. This way it became my very first finish for the Second Quarter FAL! I don't think I've ever finished anything this fast in the FAL, haha!

I wanted to take pictures outside, but in the shade there's not enough light and the whole background looks blue instead of white. I was forced to take the photos in our bedroom. Boohoo.

Front:

Back:

Close-up of  each block:

And the daffodils finally opened outside!

Blu D PITA finished!

Hey everybody,

I'm so excited to be back! As you could read from the title of today's blog I finally finished the first blue&white quilt. I was done with it a few days ago, just when we got about 12" of snow, but by the time I've hand sewn the binding on the snow was melting. I mean, what was I expecting in March, right?

Today was the perfect Spring day when I could go outside and shoot some nice photos.

So I  named the quilt Blu D PITA because it's blue and white (obviously) and it was a pain in the behind to quilt. As most of you  know it's from last year's Craftsy BOM class with Amy Gibson which was a really fun class to take. If you're not familiar with Craftsy you must check it out! Tons of great classes to offer in quilting and other exciting subjects. 

In class throughout the year we made 20 blocks  which I divided up to make 2 quilts. I figured it'll be 9 blocks each and I kept 2 of them for a later project (which I have no idea what will be). I special ordered some nice cotton thread for the quilting from Connecting Threads (which were really cheap btw. around $2.50 a spool) and used that for the free motion quilting. The design came from Leah  Day's also Craftsy class called Free Motion Quilting a Sampler. Which I have to mention is the very last class on the bottom of the quilting classes  page, so don't panic if you can't find it!

I was very nervous to start because I've never stitched the designs She was using. I quilted in the ditch around each block with Aurifil monofilament (invisible) thread on the top and an Aurifil 50wt gray on the bottom. I used my  newer singer machine for that which now I only use for piecing. Since I have a double layer of poly batting in the quilt (I like it poofy) I had to wrestle the quilt through the machine bed which I later realized resulted in a very wrinkled sashing. Which didn't help me with the sashing quilting later. That was the reason for the PITA part :)) I custom quilted each block with a different design, that's the reason for the separate pictures for each and every one of them.

Anyways, I'm really glad it's finished and out of my way and could work  on the second one which is much easier since I started it and I'm keeping my fingers crossed it stays that way, too.  Now I  can cross  this out from my 1st Quarter FAL list.

I feel like I talked to much, so I'll just paste the photos for your enjoyment!

Front (inside of our bedroom):

Back (no, there's no label on it since I don't have PFD fabric to print on):

In the front yard:

And the blocks one-by-one:

And a little Spring at the end:

 Hope you liked them as much as I had much fun making the quilt.

'Til we blog again! :)