Stitchin' Friends: Happy St. Partrick's Day

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Happy St. Partrick's Day

Hi, and I hope your St Patrick's Day weekend is as great as the one I am having. We are at North Myrtle Beach enjoying fantastic weather this weekend - just perfect. My brother and his wife, and very good friend and her husband and my hubby and I are all here, just having a fantastic time.

We started our day by going to a St. Patrick's Day parade. This was so much fun. I had not been to this type of parade before, and we really did enjoy the 2 hour long parade. Lot of bagpipes, fancy cars, bands, horses, corvets, Shriners and most touching of all to me - the verterans. There were veterans from WWII, Korean War, Vietnam Wars - these brought standing applause from the crowds as they passed through. I did not see any vets from the recent battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they were in our hearts none the less.

While here, I finished the table runner for Debbie, my sis-in-law who is also with us on the trip. Those of you who follow my blog know I asked for quilting suggestions, and I appreciated each and every one that you responded.

Here is the finished table runner. I first stitched in the ditch around the stars, and then did some free motion quilting of a flower in the center of each star and some vines with leaves all around the stars. There is a flower in the larger brown spaces between the stars as well.

On the outer border I added a simple border design. I traced the flowers and the border pattern on special paper, I think it is called Golden Threads Quilting Paper . Then I just quilt through the paper, once quilted I pull the paper off. This is an easy way to get your pattern onto the quilt. The leaves and vines were free motion with no pattern. The red ring is a neat tool that I got for Christmas I received as a Christmas gift and I just love it. Very easy to control your machine quilting with this tool.

I have also been working on an applique project. This is the top border for a quilt.