I'm In A Good Place

I'm in a good place. The back of my sewing chair is generally the staging post for nearly completed quilts. My staging post needs an extension, the ironing board is currently swamped with nearly finishes. So, still no ironing service currently, I would have to find another holding space for the 4 nearly finished quilts. 4! This gives me enough blog post matter for ages, oh at least until the end of the summer.

So here, is one nearly finish ... my Beothuk Star qal,

known to me as the Coulter baby quilt. When last spotted, on my design wall, I was just at the stage of piecing the final squares together.

 

I was nearly tempted to go rogue, as I enjoyed this layout too!

 



 Since then I have completed all the blocks, sewn them together, bordered the quilt, basted and started the quilting. Boy, have I been working hard.

All four corner blocks are completed, and the centre star pops out strongly because I used 5 different Liberty  fabrics. When the star popped out, it was like, wow, look at this.

 I wasn't expecting that. This was partly because Sandra's clever pattern delayed the final gratification, and also because I used 5 Liberty different fabrics.

You may have picked up before, I am not keen on fabric borders. I thought I might just bind this. In this occasion the designer knows what she is doing. My solid white background keeps the quilt calm and quiet, lots of negative space. When I held the proposed binding against it , it was too busy without a border. It needs the quiet reflection the border gives.

I was able to baste the quilt out in the garden. That was a mammoth basting day. I basted the Kaffe quilt, mammoth beast that it is.

This was wee buns by comparison, and just slipped in at the end before tea.

This was when the stockpile started the quilt mountain on the ironing board.

I don't generally enjoy the quilting as much as the piecing. I am enjoying this however. The quilt is small enough to  manoeuvre and it is for my soon to be born grandchild. There is always an added pleasure in making something for your own grandchild. I never understood the power of the bond between grandmother and grandchild before I had my first grandchild. Well, I didn't have my grandchild, my daughter in law did, but you know what I mean.

Part of the enjoyment is also having the right tools for the job. I swept rather a lot of fluff out of my machine, and changed the needle. I know, I should do that every project. It is like checking knitting gauge, I don't. This however is a special quilt.  I am also using a little of my precious Aurifil stash. Aurifil make, to my mind, the best threads but I find them difficult to get locally. I kind of begrudge paying postage for thread. Postage should be for the big things in life. I know that doesn't make sense. The thread is an important part of the quilt. Every time I quilt with Aurifil, I really can see the difference. One day I will win an Aurifil competition, and be as happy as pig in clover.

From my vast stash of, oh at least 5 Aurifil threads I chose one which would definitely be from the Magnolia side of the paint chart. I am never that confident with my quilting, so I like my thread to blend in rather than stand out. So far I have stitched sort of in the ditch around each of the 4 corner stars.

Along the inner border half square triangles, I have followed the shape of the flying geese. I have three quilted triangles of decreasing sizes, interset to each other. And that is as far as I have got.

The final link up is Saturday 15 June, the date of Sandra's father's birthday. A very important Canadian as he used to tell her. A very important day indeed. If I was following my original quilting plan, this would be finished. Now I am getting into the swing of this quilting, I am going to take it a bit further. As well as quilting the centre star, I think I might add some quilting to the white background. I am on a roll. Better that I finish it properly then finish for the sake of it.

I knew it was time to stop quilting tonight when I did the equivalent of sewing your trouser leg to your sewing. Hate it when the backing slides down like this. Easy fixed in this occasion though.

Now, the rest of my quilt stack? Well, I wouldn't want to spoil all my stories in one go. But you know what? My design wall is empty. For the moment. More clever plans and clever tricks are afoot.

Helen x
joining in with Beth and Cooking Up Quilts