Dear Hubby gifted me with a Long Arm Quilting Class.  It was fun, exhausting, and a bit frustrating all at the same time.  As usual, my current skills and where I want to be are not aligned.  It was fun, because it was all new to me.  Exhausting, because there was so much information to take in all at once, and frustrating, because I wanted to free motion instead of following a pantograph.  All in all, a very good experience.

I was asked to have a small quilt ready, no larger than 40″ x 40″.  So, I opted to do a baby quilt.  I love novelty children’s fabrics, so I pulled out some Pirate fabric, some coordinating scraps, and made a baby Pirate quilt.  As I don’t have a baby in my life currently, I think I will put it aside for future grandchildren 🙂

And, when it came down to it, I really liked it, so I signed up to rent the Long Arm for three days (they had a buy two get the third rental free).  Dear Hubby said it’s a gift that keeps on giving 🙂

Me and my instructor, Becky:

I have finally finished and given the quilt to my mother.  I love how it turned out.  It was fun to make (no constraints of a pattern), and I picked out my favorite colors.  And mom loved it!

Well, I have finally finished my first quilt! (first since I took up quilting again).  This one is for my mother-in-law.  She favors earth tones, so I combined my love of pink, and her browns to make this log cabin quilt.  My friend Ellie helped me pick out the fabrics.  Piecing was a cinch, but then it sat on my table for weeks, until I got the determination to finish it.  Stitching in the ditch went pretty smoothly, then I decided to do some free motion on the borders… Practicing free motion on a 12″ x 12″ sandwich is very different from quilting a whole quilt.  Let’s just say, once I got started, there was no going back.  The thought of taking out all those stitches was not so exciting, so I just sallied forth and it was “everything goes” free motion.  In the process, my 16 year old Singer started giving me trouble… Perhaps, a new machine is on the horizon?

My friend Ellie invited  me to join another quilt group, the Sew Sisters.  It is a wonderful  group of women with a passion for quilting.  We have been meeting in the evenings, and since I didn’t want to lug my machine around, I decided to start a Dorothy’s Garden Girls Quilt, and work on the embroideries there.  These blocks are fun to put together, and just the vintage style that I am into right now.  The pattern I used is from a book called “Threads from the ’30s”.  Here are the first two blocks I completed: