UFO Week, Day 4.

     I am making some progress on the blue and orange Perfect Tilt quilt on my longarm.  One thing I have learned this week is that custom quilting with the computer is not my "thing".  I love the results, but I am just too impatient to dedicate that much time to a UFO quilt.  Much like machine embroidery, 10% of the time you are actually doing something the other 90% you are watching the machine run.  I much prefer to use the ProStitcher to quilt edge-to-edge designs.  

    While the longarm was doing its thing, I kept my fingers busy by embroidering the stem on my scribble flower.  I know this project doesn't qualify as a UFO, but it did allow me to accomplish something while I was watching the machine run.  Almost.  I stitched the entire stem, took a look at my handwork and decided that the stem stitch looked too wimpy to hold the flower up!  After removing the stem stitches, I decided to couch a piece of 1/8" green ribbon in place to make the stem look sturdier.  I happen to have an acceptable shade of green in my ribbon bin.  If you look closely, you can see that spool is from "Woolworths, America's Craft Store".  Any guesses how long that spool has been in that bin? (Hint, the U.S. company ceased operations in 1997!)

    

    Itching to sew something, I decided to add backing and batting to this project and do a little echo quilting around the flower on my domestic machine.  "Domestic" is a fancy word for my regular sewing machine.  I haven't done much hand guided machine quilting since having access to a longarm.  I thought I should brush up on those skills.  They did indeed need some brushing up!  

    After echo quilting the center, I decided to pull out my collection of hand quilting stencils and mark those dark, pieced borders.  I used the hand quilting stencils even though I would be doing the stitching by machine.  I made sure I selected a continuous line design.  Finding a marking device that will show on all of those shades was a challenge.  I finally decided on a white chalk pencil.  Making a stencil fit and wrap around a corner can be a challenge.  I made it happen, it is not perfect, but I can live with it.  Black binding and I can call this WIP complete.

    I did promise that I would dig deeper into my UFO pile for the next project.  To live up to my promise, I decided that today would be Small Project Day.  The piece on the right is one of the oldest UFO's I own.  I'm sure it dates to the mid 1990's!  Imperfectly perfect, the color balance is off, the quilting is.... pretty bad.  That is probably why it ended up in the UFO pile.  There was still some reason that I have never tossed it.  Maybe it is to remind me of how my skills have improved?  I finished it off by adding some additional quilting so that it would lay flat and then added a ridiculous green ticking stripe binding that is almost as old as the top.

    I had time for one more small project.  The small piece with the multicolor squares is probably 15 years old.  I originally made it as an example of how seams should be pressed.  I was told by another reputable quilter that pressing all the seams in one row in the same direction is not a good idea.  I had to test the theory, and this is that sample.  For years this small project had a different black border.  It ended up in the UFO pile because that border fabric was just not black enough.  I removed the old border and replaced it with a black with tiny dots and finished it off with some straight-line machine quilting.

    The center of the quilt is quilted from corner to corner in magenta colored thread.   The black border is quilted in black and the quilting lines are random widths apart.  The white chalk line helps me know where to pivot on the corner.

A quick machine binding with magenta fabric and this project is finally finished.

    Working on these small projects reminded me of a woman that worked for me years ago.  She saw me making a small quilt and remarked "You know, if you make those seams a little longer, that will fit a bed".  I had to laugh.  Small quilts really are the same amount of work, can have the same number of pieces and are usually made in the same patterns as larger quilts.  There is just something fun about seeing the smaller version.

    

    I will get to enjoy these small quilts for (hopefully) years to come.  Now that they are finished, I have added them to the wall in my sewing room.  The wall behind my longarm holds the sign from the shop I owned in Pennsylvania, an old Mountain Mist batting wrapper, a watercolor by Diana Phalen and some cross stitch pieces that I designed years ago.  Now I have added these three quilts to the collection, and I still have plenty of space to fill. 

    Notice that the longarm is empty.  I forced myself to finish that blue and orange quilt before I hung the small quilts for this photo.  Even with all the complaining, I do have to say that I am happy with the way the quilting turned out.  Maybe it was worth all that effort.  I am off to make and then sew the binding on the Perfect Tilt project before I start on anything else!  I won't be able to call that project finished for a while.  The small quilts got the machine binding treatment.  The Perfect Tilt project is a larger quilt and I will be stitching that binding by hand.

BTW I LOVE that you are sharing the projects you are finishing on Facebook.  Keep up the good work!