Here are the pictures I promised you yesterday of my first AAQI Priority Quilt for the Liberated Quilting Challenge.  I even got out my light box so I could take some nice photos for my records.

It took a while to finish, really a lot longer than it should have.  I was challenged by how to attach the wolf.  I wanted to fuse him down, but do you think I could find my Wonder Under?  I ended up using some very lightweight fusible interfacing on him so he wouldn’t fray.  I wanted the fraying on the background strips, but not on him.

I blanket stitched around the wolf , using dark gray embroidery floss, and then used light gray floss in an outline stitch to make him stand out from the background a little more.

I’m pretty happy with how it came out.  I really like the wolf image.  I think he’s going to show up again in some future quilts.

I even pieced the back.  I need to register it, but I”m going to wait til I have a couple more done and register them all at once.  I already have an idea for the next one!

And I finished the “Barn Dance” quilt top this morning!  Well, not quite.  I managed to sew the top border on upside down!  I’ll have to pull it off and sew it down again in the morning.  Meant to do it this afternoon, but I forgot about it til I saw the picture!

“Barn Dance” will be donated to the Hopes and Dreams Challenge for ALS when I get it quilted.

This baby quilt has been banging around in my closet for a couple of years now.  I made it from directions in a nine-patch book by Blanche Young.  I don’t have the book anymore, and I can’t remember which book it was either!  It has a backing and batting.  All it needs is quilting, which I never did, for some reason.  So it’s in the line-up now.  My step-daughter and her hubby are going to have a baby boy soon, so it will go to her when it’s done.

I never did make a baby quilt for my step-son and his wife when their daughter was born a year ago.  So I’m going to use the little four-patches I made yesterday to make a big-girl quilt for Nora, since she’s already going on 13 months!  I spent this afternoon cutting out pink squares to go with them.  I’ll put the four-patches on point, and alternate them with the pink squares.

When I get Nora’s quilt top done, I’ll have three tops to machine quilt.  I’ll just line them up assembly line fashion, and straight line quilt them, using the tutorial provided by Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio.

Once again, I spent the day working on quilts, sewing in the morning, and getting my next project organized and set up.  It was overcast and cold with snow on and off all day, so it was a great day for quilting!

Don’t you just love how a flat, one-dimensional block of patchwork suddenly comes to life when you start quilting it? Something that was flat and lifeless is magically transformed, with a soft texture that just begs you to touch it.

Can you tell I’m jazzed? I’ve been working away diligently on Sarah’s quilt. There are nine blocks, and I have six done. It’s slow work, what with horsing around with the walking foot, but it sure does look nice when the block is done. At least I only have three blocks left to do, so that’s not so bad. Then I just have to quilt the outside borders, which should go really quickly.

I did two blocks this morning, and was going to do another this afternoon, but wound up running to the store with my dear hubby. His wireless mouse quit working, and we had to go exchange it so he could play games on his computer tonight.

Yesterday was stormy and blustery, with about three inches of snow and lots of wind. But today it was sunny, and much warmer than I thought it would be. It was a gorgeous winter afternoon, so I took advantage of it. I scooped the snow out of the driveway and walked up to the store to pick up a few groceries.

Andrew went fishing this morning at the Chocolay River. If he goes tomorrow, I may go with him. He said it looked like a great place to go snowshoeing. I can go exploring while he tries to hook into a brown trout, or a steelhead. He nearly caught one this morning, but it got away.  So we had pizza for supper instead, which was OK, too.

Here’s a shot of my favorite kitty.  She really likes this spot.  It’s warm and cozy, right in front of the heating vent!  Where else would a cat hang out in the winter?  On sunny winter days, the sun shines through the kitchen window, right onto this spot for an hour or so!  No wonder she likes it so well.

Free motion quilting seemed like a great idea this morning.  I was all set to do some really cool stuff with Sarah’s quilt.  But when I sat down to practice, Things Did Not Go Well.  I couldn’t get any control over my stitch length at all, or over where the quilting lines were going.

The problem, as you can see from my picture,  is my set-up.  I really do need a sewing table that I can set my sewing machine down into so that it’s flush with the surface.  I considered trying to put things around my sewing machine to make a flat surface to quilt on, but I’ve jury-rigged things in the past, with less than satisfactory results!

I need to save my pennies so that I can get a sewing table.  Until I can do that, I decided it’s best to save myself the frustration of making a mess (and then having to waste hours picking out a million stitches of varying lengths).  So I wimped out, and put the walking foot back on.

You’d be amazed what you can do with a walking foot.  The obvious first step was to make parallel lines of stitching on the blue sashing.  This was pretty easy, and went reasonably fast.

I still wasn’t sure what to do with the individual blocks, though.  I was going to do the borders, then come back to the blocks later, but after lunch I thought I’d try my hand at quilting the center block.

I worked around the log cabin strips in a spiral, using the walking foot.  When I came to the cats in the center, I decided to outline quilt them.

The center block was the most complicated, so I wanted to do it first to get it out of the way.  I outlined the kitties, the kitten in the carriage, the wheels, and some of the streamers.

It was pretty painstaking work, but it just proves that anything is possible, especially if you’re willing to horse around with a walking foot!  But it took less than an hour, all told, so it was still a lot faster than hand quilting it.  Plus it will go through the washer and dryer with no problems, which is important for a baby quilt!

The other blocks are smaller, and have less detail, so they should go a whole lot faster than the center block.

I’m pretty jazzed. I may even have the quilting done by the end of the week!

When I left you yesterday, I was considering how I wanted to quilt Sarah’s baby quilt.  I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with machine quilting.  I love how fast it is (this from someone who has hand-quilted a king-sized quilt–never again!), but I don’t really feel like I have much control over the process–my sewing machine is going a zillion miles an hour, and I’m just along for the ride!  And barely hanging on, at that!

Enter the new blog I just discovered–365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Filler Designs, by Leah Day.  Leah has given herself an incredible challenge:  to design a new free motion filler design every day for a whole year.

Leah herself asks the question, “Can I Create A New Free Motion Filler Design Every Day For A Year?”  Well, it looks like she’s doing it, and doing a great job of it, too.  She started in August of this year.  Not only is she coming up with all these cool designs, she also has a video of how to do each one.

She makes samples of each design, and keeps them in transparent sleeves in a three-ring binder.  Then when she’s ready to start machine quilting, she can just pull out her binder and choose what designs to use.

So my goal is to start with Day One, and work through a design each day.  I’ll end up with a binder full of designs, too.  If you’re like me, when you’re faced with the wide open spaces of a quilt needing to be quilted, you draw a blank as to what to do.  This will help solve that problem, and I’ll become a better machine quilter, too.

Leah also has tips for setting up your sewing area, and sells quilting supplies, too.

Oh yeah, what am I doing with Sarah’s quilt?  I dug up my trusty walking foot, and started out by using a feather stitch instead of quilting in the ditch.  A couple of years ago, I saw somebody in a quilt shop in Gatlinburg, TN, using a machine embroidery stitch to quilt with, instead of just doing ditch quilting.  I was intrigued, and I’ve wanted to try it ever since.  And it does look pretty cool.  I’m using yellow thread on the back, and fuschia on the front.

I’m also going to use Leah’s Shadow Waves on the sashing and borders.  I haven’t decided what to do with the cat blocks yet, but that will come.   At this point I’m thinking of stitching in the ditch along the log cabin strips in a spiral shape to the cat picture in the middle.