A Finish and a Start

I finished the Kitty Pinwheel baby quilt.The quilting went quickly as it was simple and didn't require many stops and starts. I am loving my new strip lights on my machine more and more, everything is so much easier now that I have better light.

This measures 34 inches square and the back of the quilt is the same as the background fabric.













This is my new start. I bought a panel that I am going to use as it is, only trimmed  down to fit a space inside my front door. I added the narrow green and orange/black borders to lighten and brighten it up a bit.  I have something else in mind for the space where this will hang but it is still in the planning process and it is not going to happen soon.
Once in a while I use a panel as is when I like it as it is and want something without spending a lot of time piecing and agonizing over details. I don't consider these "cheater panels" I consider them "smart panels. This will give me some practice doing free motion quilting , which I haven't done much lately.

I  usually go into overkill when it comes to pin basting and this is more than most and might turn out to be a pain in the neck.  I wanted to be sure there was no shifting with the quilting, especially around the edges. I made the backing before I did anything with the top and changed my mind about how much to trim way and then added the inner border. I had to add an extra strip in the plaid fabric and a strip at the top. I barely squeaked by on the width, If worse comes to worse with the quilting I will trim the border a little bit.

I pieced the backing using odd pieces from my box of black with color fabrics. I think the Debbie Mumm strips are from way back  (over 25 years). Jack asked why I  fuss about the back since it doesn't show anyway. Why not use  something else or why not just go and buy a bigger piece of something.  Well for one thing I am happy to be using up some of my odd pieces since I seem to be unable to just get rid of anything. Beside that I like the back to be fun, JUST BECAUSE!

Pinwheel Flimsy

I finally finished the top for the pinwheel baby quilt. I had the blocks sewn together and then progress came to a stop.

I wanted a very narrow inner border (1/2 inch finished) and I thought I had worked out how I would sew the narrow strip to the wider border strip before sewing them to the quilt. I thought my chances of having the narrow border turn out even would be better that way. There were many interruptions and I lost my focus. In the end I "unsewed" the wider strips from the first 2 borders on the quilt and sewed the narrow strips on the quilt on the other two sides and then the 4 wide strips. It came out well.
I plan to use the same green fabric for the binding.








This quilt came together easily from start to finish. My points were all good, my blocks were all sized right and my seams matched. My 1/2 inch inner border even came out even. I know the difference is because of my strip of LED lights. I can really see the edge of the fabric under the presser foot and even see that the edge of the bottom fabric hasn't slipped. I am amazed at the difference. I love my lights.

Another Baby Quilt

I am having problems with Picasa and I'm not sure whether it started after an update from Microsoft or an update from Google or Picasa. At any rate it has kept me from posting anything for over a month. I finally found (by accident)  workaround but I'm not sure it will keep working or if it is worth the trouble.

Well anyway....... I finished the baby quilt on which I was working but I have no picture of it that I can find. This is another baby quilt that I am about to sew together when I decide on which blocks I will use or eliminate.

This cute kitty fabric is the focus fabric with which I started.
I decided on 4.5 inch cut squares in order to get complete motif  sections.

I really wanted to use yellow for some of the pinwheel blocks. I shows up OK (but not great) up close.

But not when you step back a few feet.

















I moved it around a few times and always came back to the conclusion that it doesn't show up enough because all the other pinwheels are medium or dark medium values and it is light in value.












I finally decided to use the 4 pink pinwheels and eliminate that yellow pinwheel altogether in favor of another background square.

The borders are yet to be decided.  I hope I will have my photo problems worked out by the time I get it altogether and quilted

We'll see!