When we left NY in mid-September it was still warm but pleasant with temps mostly in the 70' and low 80's. Arriving in NC (actually as early as when we made a rest stop in Virginia) it was muggy with temps in the 80's to mid 90's and stayed that way through the first half of our two week stay. However once the calendar changed over to Fall on the 21st, it seemed like Mother Naure flipped a swtich and suddenly the temps dropped and it stayed cooler and in the 60s until we left!
So that's it for me (for now) so let's all go back over to Alycia's and check out all the other finishes and works in progress for this week's "Finished Or Not Friday" link up!
Part of the quilt retreat for me was to get another chance to learn to use my MIL's longarm. I'm pleased to report that her machine and I had a good 'ole time and a lot was accomplished! So I'm joining in with everyone over at Quilty Girl Alycia's for this week's "Finished Or Not Friday" to report on what got done.
I will just show the finishes here and then will do a detail post on each in the coming weeks. Be forewarned, it's still a long travel post ahead!!
We arrived on the second Friday of September so that I would be there for the monthly Saturday meeting of the Tar River Piecemakers Quilting Guild of which I am now a long distance member.
As we prepped for the trip down, I had been working on finishing up my "Sparkle and Shine" log cabin quilt made up of giant (22") courthouse steps blocks. I got 2/3rds of it quilted on my domestic machine by the time we left.
Fortunately (and despite it having been pin basted for the DSM), I was still able to load the quilt on my MIL's longarm and finish the last column of stitching to present it for Show & Tell the next day at the guild meeting! This also meant I got some more free-motion practice on my MIL's machine.
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The railing on my MIL's back porch was a convenient photo spot this trip. |
Here's a sneak peek of the equally bold back! The sides were also courtesy of stash but this time came from what I had put aside for another project.
This is my version of the quilt designed by Natalie Barnes to showcase her "Norma Rose" line which was a tribute to her mother designed for Windham Fabrics. The pattern was published in American Patchwork & Quilting magazine in December 2020.
Mine used fabrics from my stash of what I call "Mod" fabrics that I had originally collected for the next project I got to finish on the longarm: my "Modern Bohemia" BOM project!
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| The fun backing for this one is "Unstoppable" by Windham Fabrics! |
Ever since my MIL purchased her longarm, each visit has been an opportunity for new "longarm lessons". On the last trip, we had planned to try ruler quilting and had purchased the table and foot for her Handiquilter Moxie machine for that. However, we never had time to actually try them so that was the plan for this trip. Fortunately, this was the perfect project for that!
I had planned out the quilting for this all the way back in June of last year but as usual "more projects than time" meant I hadn't gotten around to it yet. I'd like to believe that the Quilt Muses had noted that I could do ruler quilting on my MIL's longarm before I did and made sure I kept busy enough to hold this project until now, LOL!
I stitched four different patterns on the quilt with three different rulers: a straight ruler, a curved ruler and one that does a "squared spiral" design.
When I embarked on this project as a self-styled Block-of-the-Month (BOM) in 2020, I changed the sizes of the originally patterned blocks so I could die cut them all with Accuquilt dies. However, when I later saw the same patterned blocks used in a runner pattern, I decided to make the blocks for that in their original size since they came together to create a finished runner perfectly sized for our dining room sideboard.
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| This shot of it on the longarm shows the programmed quilting design used. |
This one was also made from that "Mod" stash and whereas in the lap quilt I put the prints in the Churn Dash blocks and the tone-on-tones in the backgrounds, for the runner I flipped that and put the TOTs in the blocks and the prints in the backgrounds.
There was also one other project made from this stash that was finished back in 2022. I do have one QAYG UFO that also utilized this stash and I have still more of this stash in general so I'll have to see what other "Mod" projects may develop in the future!
The next trip finish was this one, a gift for my HSBFF :
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| Pattern: Patchwork PDQ by Swirly Girl Designs |
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| The back with a special label. |
She had asked me about a quilt at the end of last year and with this being a milestone birthday year for both of us, I put a plan in place to do that. She likes purple and fortunately I was able to add to what little stash I had in that color by picking up some things from two fortuitous year-end and New Year's Keepsake Quilting sales.
I had tested and planned out the quilting before we left which again called for ruler quilting and also added stitch-in-the-ditch:
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| The backing fabric choice used in the sample was changed after this test. |
I did the stitching test on my domestic machine. However, it took me a lot longer than expected to complete the simple stitch scheme I had planned when I did it on the longarm. The good news was that I was able to not only finish it but mail it off to her before we left NC!
The last two projects that I finished quilting on the longarm were UFOs that I had a simple straight-line stitching quilting plan for both. I thought doing that would be easier to execute on a longarm with a "channel lock" feature.
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| Needless to say this is NOT straight-line stitched! |
This is my interpretation of Pat Sloan's "Sting Beans!" pattern that she did as a "Block-A-Day" project back in 2022. Pat's original design used jellyroll strips and at the time I didn't have a stash of those. However I did have a huge stash of pre-cut 1-1/2" log cabin block strips and worked up a variation block that utilized them which resulted in this quilt. It also has a fun "two-sided quilt" back that I made up in 2023 using Mary Johnson's (of MaryQuilts.com) "Quick Strippie" charity quilt design.
As noted, the original stitching plan was to quilt this just doing straight line stitching across the width of the quilt. However that was also dependant on determining that the lines would be equally as straight along the pieced "strippie" sections on the back. The reason this has sat so long waiting to be quilted is that I wasn't confident about doing that on my domestic machine.
I thought using a "channel lock" feature on the longarm would allay those concerns. However with the quilt loaded on the longarm frame, I still couldn't really confirm that the position of the piecing lines would line up with the channel stitching. So I abandoned doing the straight lines in favor of just stitching it up with an all-over pattern instead.
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| The Pro-Stitcher pattern I used. |
I am pleased both with the chosen pattern and finally getting this one to a finish!
The last big finish was finally quilting my "Letters To Santa" quilt!
I am particularly happy to get this done as a start to the holiday sewing for this year. Or more accurately, it's a finish of "Christmas in July" piecing work done in 2024 and 2025, LOL!! I loved being able to just quilt it with straight lines since I thought the words should take precedence over the quilting.
Both of these almost didn't get finished when I decided that I really wanted to use a fine weight thread to stitch these up. I put in an order for Wonderfil Invisifil 100 wt (Red #605 for String Beans and White #104 for LTS) and they almost didn't get to me in time, arriving on our last Friday there!
Our return to NY was delayed by half a day since we were tracking the big nor'easter that hit the Northeast on the day before we were scheduled to leave early on the last Sunday of the month. However, for me the delay was fortunate because as of that morning I was still trying to finish quilting "LTS". The leave time delay was just enough to allow me to finish it up! Whew!!
The same week we returned from NC we were headed out again at the end of that week for a Fall camping trip in Acadia National Park --- this time staying on the Schoodic Pennisula. So I didn't have a chance to trim and bind those last two yet. Needless to say it was a very productive two week visit and although my MIL is always sad to see us go, I think her longarm machine was very glad for me to leave, LOL!!
So that's it for me (for now) so let's all go back over to Alycia's and check out all the other finishes and works in progress for this week's "Finished Or Not Friday" link up!
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