Some progress made

Hey everyone,

Welcome back!

I had a very busy last few weeks, and hardly got to sit down to sew. I did some minor repairs, but not much quilting done.

The last few weeks I realized that I am in a desperate need to have my own quilt as I was spending a few nights on our office sofa. No, nothing is wrong between Fiance and I, and I'm not planning on breaking up with him or anything. But unfortunately we lost our baby kitty on July 25th due to a mysterious accident, and we were both devastated along with Smoky who lost his brother. In a few days we decided to adopt a kitten to have him some company in these very difficult times. We both miss Sleepy terribly as we were raising him since the day he was born.

The new kitty arrived in 4 days, we named him Paw as he has gigantic size paws. He just turned 6 months about a week ago, and was very scared, hissing and growling at Smoky. Fortunately he is such a calm grown-up kitty, and can make friends with strangers. So I spent the first 2 nights with Paw in the office, and Smoky was sleeping with Fiance in our bedroom. It took them a few days to get to know each other, and it's been six weeks since the adoption, after 2  weeks they started to play with each other. Things are going well, despite the circumstances.
Here they are, unfortunately I only have a phone picture to show.

However...

I did finish putting the borders on Lucky Stars finally, and also pieced the backing together for my Celtic Solstice. I did a mitered corner on Lucky Stars, as I thought what the heck... 

For the backing of Celtic Solstice I used similar colors as are in the quilt top.

It's weird to be in my sewing room without my regular helper, sometimes Smoky comes to keep me company and guard my fabrics.

Now I have a lot of tops to be quilted, and was thinking I should start basting them, the smallest one first, but then realized I don't have a backing for that one, and need to make one for Lucky Stars, too. Always something :)

Chain of Stars top, waiting for basting:

I have so many things I have to get done that I had to write a list :) Some of it was crossed out already, but there's still plenty left...

That's all for now, I'll be back with some updates, hopefully soon!

'Til we blog again! :)

Putting borders on without a measuring tape

It's been a while again since I posted last time.  Life got in the way which I would not like to explain right now, maybe in a while after everything is settled. I promised to post a tutorial about how I'm measuring and attaching the border on my quilt top without using a measuring tape.I use this method every time I have to put a border on a large quilt.

First, press the top, and lay it out on a hard surface. Then measure the sides of your quilt to determine how long of the border strip you need to make. You take 2x the length, + 2x the width of your top. Add about 10 inches to be on the safe side. Take your continuous border strips to the top, and lay it down in the middle lining up the edges.

The next step is to fold the border strip back, and cut with scissors, matching up the fold with the edge of the quilt top.

Then holding up the strip that was just cut, line up the ends with the rest of the uncut border strips carefully.

Cut the end the same way, folding back the longer strips, matching the fold with the end of the border strip.

Pin the borders in place, and sew it on. After pressing, repeat all the steps with the other 2 sides.

Easy peasy :)

I'm working on my Lucky Star quilt top, putting the borders on, this time mitered. That'll be my next post.

'Til we blog again! :)

Chain of Stars addition

As I said in my last post I made some modification to my Chain of Stars top. I decided to make it bigger, and also I didn't like it not having a border since the pattern went all the way out and it would've bothered my eyes after binding.
Remember the top when it looked like this?:

I love the design and wanted to make it float and stand out so I pieced some background fabrics together for a fairly wide border. I like it much better now. I was thinking to put squares in the middle of each of the borders so the square pattern can come together, but it would've been too much hassle, so I just decided against it.

It turned out this way:

It's a rainy day outside so I had to ask Fiance to hold the top up for me, pardon the fingers! 

I also made the binding @pantsfreesia-style! 

Now I'm just waiting for the backing to arrive which I ordered from Hancocks of Paducah since they had a sale going on, plus I got a 20% off coupon code in the email for Mother's day, so win-win for me! I have so many thing to do, and I really don't feel like piecing the backing for now.

I took pictures of how I did the borders without using a measuring tape, and will write up a tutorial on that in tomorrow's post.

'Til we blog again! :)

SPOILER ALERT! Chain of Stars Mystery Quilt top done

I've been slowly working away on the Chain of Stars Mystery Quilt I signed up for on Craftsy. The quilt came in different sizes and first I picked the 64" x 64", but then I changed my mind and made the 48" x 48" layout. I like the result a lot. I had a little booboo that I had to correct which resulted in multiple attempts to fix the problem. I think I had to take the top apart twice before I could put it back together the right way. Then I took pictures of it to post it on the blog, and after editing the first one I realized I still had a turn in it that I had to take it apart again. I think I'll name this one 3rd time is the charm :))

I think I will put borders on the top and bottom to make it a rectangle, I don't know why I like them better than being square. Maybe because our bed is a rectangle? Who knows!

Top #1:

Top#2:

Top#3, the final result:

Of course by the time I got to photograph it it became cloudy outside so the colors are truest on the second picture. I didn't want to edit the photos too much.

'Til we blog again! :)