Monday, April 7, 2008

Actual Quilting

I say I'm quilting all the time, but most of the time I may be making quilts, but not actually quilting. I spend more time cutting, piecing, or even pressing than I do quilting. My youngest daughter got a toy ironing board two Christmases ago. She was so excited about her new toy that she set it up immediately, found some doll clothes and got to work. As she stood ironing away, she told us she was using her sewing machine just like mommy. To this day she has trouble knowing the difference between sewing and ironing.
So today I worked on the actual quilting part of the process. Because my pattern was a star, I thought I'd try the obvious and just put a big free form star in the middle of each block. I'm not thrilled with the way it turned out. I think the pattern is too big and spread out. I like fairly dense quilting in the final product. My husband thought that the red thread stood out too much and the stars looked too free form. I'm not sure how else free form stars can look, but it's good to know that he's still willing to give me an honest opinion. I offered to send all my quilt out to be finished, but when he found out the going rate for that, he decided that as long as free form was a design decision and not a mistake that it was fine after all.
I am happy with the borders though. I used free form flying geese pattern that I think gives a nice effect. I also love the fleur-de-lis fabric that I used on the back. I rarely have back sized pieces in my stash, but I bought this a while ago and let it sit until I had the right quilt to use it with. The binding is on, I'll finish the hand stitching in the next few evenings and it will be good to go.

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