Pemberley - Hand quilting journey begins

Last night I began the long journey of hand quilting Pemberley. I used a little bit wider border than the designer, Katrina Hadjimichael, did on her quilt and my quilt top measured 90.5" x 99".  Its going to be a beautiful bed cover on my guest room bed someday.

 I should start keeping a time journal on how long it takes me to quilt it, as so often people will ask,"How long did it take you to quilt that?" and I never know.  But then again, do I really want to know????

A friend, Jessica Hall, who is also a longarm quilter, basted this quilt together for me.  I tried doing it my self but was overwhelmed with the size. She did a great job and I will definitely have her do large quilts in the future for me. 

I am using wool batting for the first time and so far enjoying working with it.  The wool gives the quilt a different feel and I think the drape will be nicer.  I am using YLI hand quilting thread, but have found I have to put the Thread Heaven treatment on the thread to get it to smoothly glide through the batting.  This was never necessary with 80/20 batting.

I have also started putting together by machine piecing a "15 Degree Quilt."  I took a workshop in 2017 to learn this technique, making one block, and enjoyed it so much that I purchased fabric to make a quilt.  The fabric has resided in a UFO box since 2017 and is now destined to become a big girl quilt for my granddaughter, Adeline. Her 4th birthday is in February, and I hope to have to have it completed by then, but I will  obviously have to machine quilt this one as my hoop will be filled for most of the upcoming year.  This will be a twin size quilt and I will probably just cross hatch it, a favorite machine quilting technique.

Temperature Quilts

This is something new to me and I thought it would be fun.  Linda D brought it up at our last club meeting, and I think we will do a challenge to the club to make a Temperature Quilt for 2020.  I get excited about any new quilt project and have been planning this one since the club meeting.  I am going to do mine for a year of seasons, and since the Winter season begins Dec.21, 2019 mine will cross years, but that is ok.  I am going to do rail fence blocks with four rails.  Still trying to decide how I want to do those rails - could have a rail for the low temp, one for the high temp. and then a neutral color for the other two rails.  But then, instead of a neutral, I could pick a color representing that season - like grey sparkly for Winter, green for Spring, yellow for Summer and orange for Fall - at least that way the seasons would be separated. 

I drew a diagram in EQ for how my quilt will look:  In this one, I have blue solid at the beginning of Winter, green at the beginning of Spring, yellow at the beginning of Summer and then Orange at the beginning of Fall.  The white in the bottom right corner will be a signature block. I had to add these color blocks to even out the quilt blocks.

Here is what it will look like if I go with a color for each season:  I think this may be what I have to do, as I love the way the seasons are identified.  In the solid blocks I will embroider the Season name and the dates of the season.

 Ohhhh, I am getting so excited about this quilt!!  Don't you want to play too????

 

I researched the Rock Hill temperatures for 2019 up through October as that was all I could find on the net to get an idea of what the spread of our temps would be and how many of each strip I need to prepare.  I came up with the following breakdown:  I will have to make sure that the "temperature fabric" is a good contrast with the seasonal color fabric.  I am going to breakdown the temperature chart by 5 degrees intervals to make sure I have a lot of contrast between temperatures.

 

 

 

 

 



Dear Jane Quilt

I don't think I have posted a picture of my completed Dear Jane quilt.  Started on September 10, 2001 and ompleted just a few weeks ago.  I recently had the priviledge to talk to my guild, York County Quilters and to the Charlotte NC Guild about the history of Jane Stickle and my own journey in making this quilt.  This picture was taken at the Charlotte Guild meeting and I did not notice until after the meeting that it was hanging sideways.  Guess it pays to put a sleeve on the quilt to make sure it is always hung right....funny, I am the one that told them to hang it that way.  Both guilds could not have been nicer to me during the presentation and seemed to enjoy hearing about the history of Jane Stickle and her amazing quilt.

Chirp Crossing

I recently found this cute pattern in McCall's Quilting magazine and thought it would make a good quick project for me.  It is cute, but turned out to be sooooooo confusing.  Finally determined the pattern fabric cutting instructions were not right, well actually I think they may have been right, but the paper piecing pattern was incorrect.  This is the pillow I made with the pattern.  It measures 14" x 23".  I think it really is cute.

The problem is, the pattern said it would be 12 1/2" x 20".  All the measurements of the pieces other than the birds were too small to match up with the birds.  I checked my paper piecing pattern with those printed in the magazine, and they were spot on.  But the chicks came out 4" unfinished, yet the cutting instructions for the sashing between the birds showed 3 1/2".   It was the same with the large bird.  Also, the large piece above the little chicks was said to cut at 11 1/2", but my chicks plus the sashing added up to 13 1/2".  My guess is that whoever printed the paper piecing pattern for the articles, did them the wrong size.  I know in EQ you give the finished size of the block when printing the paper piecing pattern, and I am guessing the magazine designer used the unfinished measurement.  Anyways, I figured out the measurements I needed to complete my pattern and think it turned out great. 

One other thing, the article gave the measurement for making a pillow envelope back. Now their pillow was to measure 12 1/2" x 20 1/2", and they said to cut two 12 1/2" x 26 1/2" rectangles for the back.  I think they meant 12 1/2" x 16 1/2"

I wonder if anyone else tried to make this cute pillow and gave up when things just did not fit.

I also used the same cute little birdies to make a Fall table runner - I call it Candy Corn Crows.

Pemberley Top complete!!

I can't believe it, but I actually have finished my Pemberley Quilt top.!!!  I tried to hang it up to take pictures, but I am really not supposed to be on a ladder since I had that dreadful head concussion last year, so I just spread it out on my guest room bed.  I was delighted to see that it will be big enough for a bedspread and now I know it will reside in this room once I have it quilted.    I am going to hand quilt it, so this might get done in time for my Guild's quilt show in September.

 

I was very anxious about the mitered border for the corners, but they actually turned out pretty nice, and not as difficult as I expected them to be.

And just to prove you can teach this old dog new tricks - I was having a lot of trouble pinning the borders to the top as the pins kept coming lose and falling out when I was sewing.  This has been a problem for years, but was driving me crazy on this quilt.

Getting so aggravated as they really had to be pinned just right for the quilt to stay square.  Then I though, maybe I should stick the pin through the fabric twice. Presto, no more pins falling out or coming loose.

Now some of you may have known to do this your entire sewing career, but for me, it was a new idea.  Why didn't my Momma teach me this when I first started sewing??  Sure would have saved me some aggravation over the last 60 years.  Well, in all honesty, she may have tried - but I always didn't listen closely.

Thanks for stopping by,
Teresa