Sunday, January 27, 2013

Backlog Cleared Up!

Finally - I've gotten through my backlog. 
 
Between transitioning from Harley to Max, Christmas, and general busy-ness I had a backlog building up.  I generally don't like having "UFOs" hanging around so I've been working to get all these projects finished up. 
 
When I was moving stuff around to make room for Max - the frame is 2 feet longer - I found a stack of Diva's quilts waiting to be quilted.  I thought I'd finished them all up ages ago!  Oops! 
 
And Kristie brought me a stack of her quilts for quilting.  Adding my own into those, I think I had about 20 quilts to quilt (most of them were lap quilts so not that big).  This worked out really well as it gave me lots of practice quilting to make friends with Max.  We are becoming very good friends!  Anyway - here are my quilts since about October. 
 
 
I'm calling this one "Remember Summer" because it reminds me of summer.   This pix washes out the colours - they are really more vivid.  I quite like it.




I finally got around to making the little penguin quilt.   I'm calling it "Me and My Dad".

You may recall that Joan has made a couple of them - but this is mine.  The pattern is so absolutely cute!  The pattern is in a Quiltmaker Magazine, which credits the design to Denise Starck and Quiltmaker Magazine staff.
 
 

 
 

 
 
 
This one is my own design.  This one is called "Maui Reef". 
 
I wanted something I could pre-cut for the quilt retreat back in October.  I got it all cut, but in the end didn't get to it as we ran out of time.  I made my "sacrificial quilt" for my APQS class to learn how to run Max, then I did the penguins.   So I just finished this one up a few weeks ago. 
 
 
 
The square in square blocks are quite big (12" I think) because I wanted to show off the fish fabric, which I had picked up in Maui.  Quilting is supposed to resemble water... 


This (below) very scrappy quilt is my "sacrificial quilt".  I went through all my scraps and cut a ton of 2.5 inch squares - this is what I used to learn how to run an APQS Millennium - which is what Max is.  It was pretty awful quilting - I put the machine through the gears.  So I gave it to my son Eric, who was soliciting donations for one of the women's shelters in town. 


I also made a little Christmas quilt.  Again pix colours are not great - pretty washed out.  I called this one "Ribbon Candy".  The design is by Karla Alexander in a book I have. 





Then these two little table topper things -

Above is about 12" square.  Can't see them very well, but I beaded around the edge of the tree and a gold star on top.
 
Below is about 24" square - nothing fancy here.  Both were from Thimbleberries book I took out from the library.
 
 

Last week I was too tired to work on anything requiring much thinking - I have such a quilt started - it will be for a future post.  So... I dug into my "left overs" and found the remains of  Marla's quilt.  There was enough to put another quilt together.  It's a Loralie fabric line - ladies in bathing suits.  This one will be "Consolation Prize".  I'll give it to my cousin Marj who broke her ankle - badly - when she was in Maui after Christmas.  It will be her consolation prize - she'll be able to look down at it as see what she could have been doing instead of sitting around the last few days with her foot up in a cast.  This pix shows it before the binding is on - that's today's task.  Binding will be red. 

And here is some of the quilting - I'm pretty happy with it!  Yay Max!


Finally for this post - the Divas quilt we put together yesterday at our Divas Day.  Dorothy and I had stitched the half square triangles last time.  Yesterday Dorothy, Joan and Brenda were absent for various reasons - so it was just me on the machine yesterday with Kristie doing the layout and organizing.  Karen was cutting our next time quilts and Sue was doing the cooking.  All that to say, only one top stitched and it still will get a zinger/border put around it.  We do get a lot more done when we're all on deck!  But still a good day with the Divas!