Here is another picture of my attempt at following a pantograph. This one is much harder than the other one. Hopefully you can at least tell they are leaves. I am still having a time trying to get the tension right. The bobbin thread keeps poking through on the top. I've loosened the top tension as much as I dare, so I think next I will have to try to alter the bobbin tension. I hate doing that!
I just booked a trip to Georgia today. I leave in two weeks. I will have to prioritize what I get done before I leave. I think I'd like to get a couple more quilt tops done, and ready to practice on when I get back, rather than spend all my time on the quilting machine. I would really love to conquer the tension problem before I go though.
Here is one of my new quilting books. It is quickly becoming one of my favorites. Sorry the picture is blurry. In case you can't read the title it is Making Scrap Quilts to Use It Up! by Lynne Edwards. I LOVE scrap quilts. They are far and away my personal favorite. This book has some traditional patterns along with some I've not seen before. One of the things I love about it is several of the quilts have more than one picture of that pattern completed. For example, one of the quilts shows the pattern done up in plaid, and another using florals. It really gives you a better feel of how a quilt will look using your scraps. Some of them have a quilt done with a color-controlled pallette, and another just using value to sort the scraps. There is a bag pattern in there, that would make up into great Christmas gifts. I bought it from www.bookcloseouts.com when they had their craft books on sale. They still sell it, as does amazon. On Amazon you can look inside and get a feel of whether this book would interest you. I didn't do a big comparison on price, if you are interested in adding it to your collection, I'll leave that up to you.
It's funny, I've spent so much time playing with scraps lately, someone might think I have no yardage. I have LOTS of yardage, I just love my scraps. When I first started quilting, I never saved anything less than 2.5 inches square. Bonnie Hunter and her site www.quiltville.com got me past the fear of smaller pieces, and now I am starting to make string blocks, and piece with 1.5 inch squares. Some women save 3/4 inch squares, and I am not that obsessive yet. I do have a small plastic container with crumbs down to 1 inch. If I don't try making a crumb block soon, I'll ditch it. I am having fun with the strings though. Todays goal- finish sewing some orphan blocks into a quilt top. I added black and white corners to rail blocks left over from multiple quilts. The rail blocks didn't match at all, and the colors clashed badly. They needed a unifying element to make them work. I should be able to get that top finished today, but then I started playing with the cut-off HST's from that, and came up with another idea for those. I'm still sewing on the guest room quilt as leaders and enders, but I'm almost out of pieces. I think I'll make it bigger, so I need to cut four more blocks for it, plus all the extra blocks for my Double Delight. Hopefully I'll get all the cutting done by this weekend, maybe....
BTW, for anyone wondering about the cat quilt, the pattern is called Kool Kats Kwilt by Patti Carey made for Northcott.
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