I finished machine quilting the Westering Women quilt last weekend.
Now it is all washed and soft.
The design is from the Civil War Quilts blog by Barbara Brackman. The quilt is 54"x67". It was a fun quilt to make, along with interesting stories to go with each block design.
I love sampler quilts, but seem to struggle on deciding what free motion designs to quilt. For this one I decided to keep it simple and only use three different quilting designs - Continuous Curves, Swirls and Hooked Feathers. I am really pleased with how it came out.
I used my favourite combination for a lap quilt of silk batting (Hobbs Tuscany Silk) with minky/plush backing (it comes 60" wide, that I why I made the quilt a bit smaller than the original pattern). It makes for a lovely, soft, squishy, warm on bare skin, lap quilt.
For the free motion quilting in the sashing, corner stones and blocks I used this brown thread - it was amazing how well it blended with all the different colours.
I used red Aurifil thread for the hooked feathers in the border.
I did stitch in the ditch around all the blocks before free motion quilting, and for that I tried using Bottom Line thread, but my machine really doesn't seem to like it these days, and somehow it kept cutting the thread (I even removed the blade from the built in cutter, but that didn't help). So I ended up switching to a thread from Connecting Threads called Essential Pro. It is a 70 weight thread that I had bought on sale and tried for the first time - it wasn't quite the right colour, but worked very well.
When I was picking out fabric from my stash for the binding I thought this fabric seemed appropriate since the quilt is designed by Barbara Brackman.
Barbara's quilt-along for this year is called Yankee Diary,
and this is my first block (invisible machine appliqué). It is 9"x12". The next two block patterns are out, and I knew going into this quilt along that it would be more 'American' than I would like (stars and US flags...), so I am still deciding if I will just make whatever appropriately sized appliqué blocks, or wait and see what appliqué will work when the other blocks are finished. The style for this quilt-along is one of my favourite - random sized blocks with a mix of appliqué and pieced blocks, so I knew that I wanted to join.
These blocks are for Kathleen Tracy's quilt-along for the Small Quilt Group.
I also decided to go back to working on my Pineapple quilt blocks this week. These are large, 14" blocks, and I had forgotten how long they take to piece. I have 18 out of the 49 blocks pieced now.
In the Knitting/Spinning department I have a couple of finishes -
This shawl is from the pattern Neato by Jumper Cables (a Canadian designer), that I made with hand spun yarn that I spun last year from fibre that I won during Tour de Fleece. It is a 50% Silk, 50% Merino blend that I spun into a lace weight gradient.
This little chicken I knit out of some leftover hand spun. The pattern is Bock Bock, I'm a Chicken by Patricia Grace Evans.
These next two are a couple of skeins that I finished spinning for the Spin the Bin Challenge 2017-
100% flax/linen.
100% Merino that I dyed and drum carded to blend. The grey is heathered and the coloured one is a gradient. This was spun to make a Leftie by Martina Behm.
I also did some dyeing -
100% Finn wool that is part of my Spin the Bin 2017 Challenge.
And for fun I dyed some Cashmerino sock yarn.
I love to have a pair of plain socks on my needles for simple knitting, and it is more interesting with fun yarn.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!♥︎
