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Friday, April 28, 2006

Finally a Quilt!

There are only twenty four hours in the day. So when I'm doing genealogy I'm not quilting, and when I'm writing poetry I'm not doing genealogy, and when I'm quilting I'm not writing poetry or the family history.

I got very interested in researching my family history a few years back, and intended to spend one year researching and writing the book. That one year stretched and stretched...now I am nearly in a position to write the book, finally. In the meantime I started to get fabric withdrawal, so I started a simple quilt just so that I could handle gorgeous fabric. One that I didn't have to think about too much, so that I could sit at the machine and sew while family history puzzles and half-finished poems solved themselves in my head.

At the beginning of the year I treated myself to a brand new Bernina Aurora sewing machine. The one with the built-in stitch length regulator for machine quilting. And I had this quilt basted up ready to sew, so it was the first thing I quilted on the new machine (which I love). Now it is nearly finished, all I have to do is darn in a few more thread ends and label the back. I think this block design came from a book by Judy Hooworth and Margaret Rolfe called "Sensational Scraps"



So here it is in all it's glory, the full quilt - almost - my daughters couldn't hold it up high enough - and a detail showing the quilting. Most people around here seem to stipple a quilt to death when they are machine quilting. But I've noticed that makes it rather stiff, and I wanted this to drape on a bed, so I just quilted leafy vines down the yellow sections and around the borders. It seems to be about the right amount.

2 comments:

Deb R said...

That's a very striking quilt and I like the vine and leave quilting very much. I'm not a fan of stippling as an overall technique (although it's quite useful to flatten a background area) so I'm always pleased when I see someone do something else!

Catherine said...

Thanks for visiting again. Yes, I do think stippling can get a bit boring. I have a nice sampler pinned to my design wall of different designs, from a class with Robbi Eklow when she visited New Zealand. And there are people like Caryl Bryer Fallert who do wonderful machine quilting without a stipple in sight.