Back to real life...

Yesterday, my schedule returned to real life stuff again. Laundry, cleaning up the house and getting back to my quilting schedule, along with my blogging. I think Georgie felt a little let down. I did not go outside and play with her as much as she had gotten used to last week with Brie wanting to be outside playing with her and running around.

I thought that I would get all of my laundry done but I had the problem of needing to turn off the drier so that I could use my iron (can't overload the circuit or I blow a breaker) and then I would forget to turn the drier back on. So today, I hope that I can get the rest of the laundry washed, dried LOL, folded and put away.

In the meantime, I did get a customer quilt prepped for quilting on my DSM, it is
45" X 50" so I would like to do that one sitting down. I didn't start the quilting as I am waiting for a thread order to arrive. I am out of all my light beiges for backgrounds along with many other colors that I have used up. I placed an order of $168 worth of threads last week. They are to arrive today. It feels like Christmas.

I thought I would give you the reasons that I use to decide if I am going to quilt on the long arm or on my domestic home machine. One of the determining factors is how large is the quilt. If it is wallhanging size I often will do it on the DHM simply because I love to quilt in this manner. I learned machine quilting on my home machine long before I got the long arm and I love it. That does not mean that I will not quilt a large quilt on the DHM. I just quilted a grandmother's flower garden quilt that was 80" X 93" on the DHM, which brings me to that reason. The complexity of the design or how detailed and densely quilted the piece needs to be. I have much better control on the DHM than the long arm. So if the quilt is to be a show quilt or a family heirloom piece I will quilt it on the DHM. If I have a piece that needs to be quilted loosely with an all over pattern such as a baby or lap quilt that will be used and washed a hundred times I will do it on the long arm. I also love doing those large quilts on the longarm as I don't have to wrangle that quilt all around trying to get it basted all together. I can do semi custom work on the long arm with good results and I do love the speed that the longarm gives me. The last factor is if a customer requests that I do their quilt on one machine or the other.

So much for that, let me show you what I did get done yesterday.

I think this little piece will be going into Jr.'s room. The new grandbaby that is coming in Dec/Jan. It is a vintage piece of linen that I found at an antique store, the red work was done and I just love the animals. Since Jr.'s room is going to be barnyard animals and Brie's is jungle animals this marries the 2 nicely.
Now this photo shows a piece that I pieced together on a retreat last winter and I got it basted together and quilted yesterday afternoon.

I stitched the binding down while watching TV last evening (as I did all 3 of these pieces last night.) Since quilting is my therapy this speaks to me. I love the wild frenzy of quilt around the quilter. I named this piece "I've lost my marbles" as I used a piece of fabric with marbles in it and incorporated hand dyed fabric too.

This table runner I have had quilted for a little while and it was in my basket to finish the binding so it also got pulled out and finished last evening.

I made this from a stack of squares that were given to me by my retreat room mate last winter and I tried out the disappearing 4 patch technique that I learned at one of our quilt meetings. I knew about the disappearing 9 patch but never had heard of doing a similar thing with the 4 patch block. It was fun but I would definitely use more contrasting fabrics if I do it again as the design got somewhat lost in the very busy prints of these. It was a great learning piece. I also love the swirling quilting motif that I used to quilt this piece. Lots of fun.

Well, it is time for me to get to work. I hope you have a wonderful day and try to get some of those unfinished projects done that you have lying around waiting for your attention. It makes you feel really good to see progress being made. Now off to the laundry. That will be progress for me. LOL.