Thank You, Long Arm Quilters!

I love quilters who have long arms! Don't you? Of course, I mean long-arm quilting machines.

Another long-armer has volunteered to finish some tops. These will be going to Wrap-a-Smile. I so appreciate offers like this, because I enjoy making tops but not finishing the quilts. I do what I can to finish some, but I'm slow and very basic, and I can't afford to send them all out to be done professionally. So I rely on volunteer long-arm quilters to help save the day. When a new long-arm volunteer steps forward, I rejoice!

Today I sent these four tops to our new volunteer:

Rainbow

Mendota (made at the Sunshine retreat last June)

8-patch (I copied a block I saw at Covered With Love blog)

Random (made from leftover squares)

Also, my cousin has a new long-arm and is helping. I sent her this one recently. It is for Quilts Beyond Borders:

When these quilts are done, I will bind them and send them off to cuddle some kids.

Here I Am! Still Sewing!

I know I have not posted much lately, other than a few book reviews. Well, I have been busy sewing, and will show you below some of my projects.

In this first bunch you may recognize some duplicates. These are tops I made in the past (and may have shown here) but other people machine quilted and bound them (or I may have bound a few of them). It is so helpful to have a team of people who provide options to help start or finish our projects! It takes a village to get this volume of quilts made, finished, and sent around the world. I still have a small pile of quilted but not yet bound quilts. I plan to concentrate on bindings at our next gathering of quilting friends. (Then I will have more photos to share.)

Here are some that I have made and finished, or they are hoping to be done soon. The first one is for baptism at church; the others are for either Quilts Beyond Borders or Wrap a Smile:

These are my most recent GE Designs blocks for her Stroll in Paris mystery. If you are doing the same project, you can see how far behind I am! This is block #2, and tomorrow she will reveal block #6! I better get busy on these. If I fall hopelessly behind I will feel...hopeless.

Tomorrow is Sunday, and I love sewing on a Sunday afternoon, but tomorrow I will have Bonus Grandson visiting, so not much sewing will happen. Luckily I have six other days in the week to do whatever I want.

Quilting and Coughing

I had two super busy weeks in June: first the retreat, then a conference. After that I was exhausted, and I knew I was coming down with something. Dang. I have been sick ever since. Coughing, coughing, feeling miserable, but in between naps I sometimes found a bit of energy to do some machine quilting. So I managed to get these five tops done. Three of these quilts have backings made from free fabrics I got from Darci at Field Trip Quilting. She gave me some big pieces of yardage. They made many, many backs which came in very handy for those 142 tops we made at the retreat. VERY helpful; thank you, Darci. All of these quilts, and the ones we made at the retreat, will be donated to kids gets oral cleft surgeries and to kids in orphanages in underserved areas around the world.

Those last two were made at the retreat and are already done! That feels good. We divvied up the tops and sent some to other volunteers, so almost all the tops were spoken for. Team work! It was amazing. I still have several from the retreat but will be mailing some of them out, so my pile of tops is not that daunting. Yay!

Because I was still sick through all this, my life was just a series of naps, coughing attacks, and sewing, followed by more naps. I finally went to the doctor and found that I had pink eye along with some allergic reactions, which I have NEVER had this late into the season, but I guess it's that kind of a year. The doctor gave me four different medications!

I'm slowly crawling out of the hole and feeling better. Now, some energy is creeping back in, so I think I'll go finish another top.

Two More Bound and Gagged

...Oops! I mean two more quilted and bound! The first one was made entirely by me. The second one was made by me and quilted by Nanette (binding by me). She has agreed to quilt several of my charity quilts this year. She's a lifesaver!

Olympics Quilt

I finally got inspired to do some machine quilting. Today I finished this Olympics Quilt (so-called because it contains the colors of the Olympics). I am hoping this inspiration continues. Here I go.. back to Sewing Room to start quilting #2.

My (make-do) Method of QAYG

I have made two quilt-as-you-go quilts. That is, I did the quilting in sections, before all the blocks were joined together into one top. The first time I did it, I looked up ideas on the web and found something that seemed to work. This is how I did that one (which I sent away and could no longer examine to remember how)... and so I had to scratch my head and try to remember how when it came time to do this recent one. This one is 48" x 72" which is a little big to quilt on my regular domestic machine. I chose to quilt it in three sections, which means I had two joints to make.

(1) After the three sections were quilted, I joined them together as usual, pushing back the batting and backing so I could pin and sew the seam. This shows me pinning one of the seams. Note: one can't quilt all the way to the edge, because you need to make room for this seam. Also the backing and batting are needed for creating the back joint.

(2) This is the actual sewing of the seam, showing the batting and backing pulled back for room to sew.

(3) The sections are all sewn together, so now I have to work on the back joint seam. I'm not a precise, OCD, it-must-be-perfect quilter, so keep that in mind, please. I pulled back the backing fabric and then just trimmed the batting with a scissor. It sort of meets except where it sort of overlaps. Whatever. I used a glue stick under it to help keep it in place as I worked.

(4) With the batting trimmed and glued into place, I folded the backing fabric into place so it meets. Oh, look! Someone else must have done the quilting in that spot, because it's not perfectly straight! (That's called organic.)

(5) Now I sewed a zig-zag stitch over the folded seam. Do you see that the joint seam is not perfectly centered? That was sort of an accident/on purpose thing.

(6) I liked that it wasn't perfectly centered, because I didn't want to be sewing it right on top of the seam I had just made when I sewed the quilted pieces together. This way, my zig zag landed to the side of the regular seam, so from the front I zig-zagged again on the other side, symmetrically placed, and this helped secure all the batting and folds that were underneath. At least that's my theory, and I hope it's true. [Confession - when I did this joint the second time, I also stitched-in-the-ditch in that regular seam, to add even more strength, but I chose not to do that on this first joint. Who knows why.]

(7) Here's the joined sections from the front. You can't even tell! Isn't it kind of nice? I was pleased. My husband looked at it, front and back, and said "You can't even see it." That was music to my ears.

(8) Here is the completed quilt with a little of the back showing. If you click on the picture it'll get a little bigger so you can examine it. Go ahead. It's not perfect by any means, but I invite you to take a look anyway. This method worked for me, and I'm satisfied with it. I'm so glad I have learned not to worry about perfection. I have a lot more fun just enjoying the quilting process without being strict with myself.

Here's the completed quilt. Yay! I took some time to admire it and be pleased with myself. (Oh, this quilt turned out a little darker than I intended it to.. oh, well. It still looks good.) And now I'm on to another project.

My Words Quilt: I Love It!

I got my Words quilt back from the quilter, and I just love it! This is a huge quilt.. almost ten feet long! I worked on it for over five years. It was going to be a birthday gift to myself for my 60th birthday. Next week I'll be 65! My goal was to get it done by my 65th birthday. I don't know if I'll get it bound by then, but it's done enough for me to say I accomplished my goal.

It was custom quilted by Steffani Burton of Minnesota. She did a beautiful job!

Several of you made word blocks for me. Thank you so much. You helped make this quilt very special.

The backing is a Tula Pink fabric. I had my husband's name in a block from an abandoned project so I put it on the back with two little words added: "Carol loves."