Vermont Quilt Festival

I had a great trip to Vermont Quilt Festival today with my good friend Megan!  It was so nice to be back in Burlington.  I spent four wonderful years there at Saint Michael's College and have very fond memories of that place.  The quilt show takes place just down the street from Saint Mikes so I got to do a quick drive by visit of campus.

We had a great time at the show and spent plenty of time looking at all of the beautiful quilts.  Afterwards we even managed a quick trip down the road to Nido, a wonderful modern quilt and yarn shop.  If you've never been in I highly recommend it.  I picked up a few things there that I'll share at another time.

In the mean time I'll leave you with this antique double wedding ring quilt.  Feels very modern doesn't?

Little time for sewing

I've hardly had any sewing time the last few weeks.  Not since the triangle quilt backing debacle.  I still haven't decided what to do about it.

Last week my sewing mojo was missing in action.  My husband was away on work for the week so I had plenty of time to sew, but for some reason I just didn't feel like it... do you ever have those days?  I did do a bit of hand sewing with a batik charm-pack I had lying around. 

I started sewing them together but I don't really like how it's looking.  The stitches are really obvious and I don't really like the color placement.  I think I'll probably scrap this layout and start over.  I really love the modern feel of these floating hexagons.  I think that type of layout would help the batiks feel less frumpy and help the beautiful bright colors to really pop.

This weekend I wasn't able to sew either.  I ended up traveling to the Great North Woods of New Hampshire (Yes, that is a real place!) to spend some time with my husband on his job site in Pittsburgh, NH.  For those of you who know your northern New Hampshire geography,  that's the bit of NH that is further north than Canada.  We got a lot accomplished but, alas, little done in the way of sewing.  I did manage to stitch up a few more of the hexie's mentioned above.

I also recently ordered some cute mini-business cards from Moo.com, which arrived last week. How cute are these?!  I plan on carrying some with me for when people ask me about my blog and including them in the Bee packages I send out.   I was inspired to create a design after two different bee-mates included them in their packages.  I used my new blog header for the front, featuring the Globe Trotting QAL in Rapture, and my new triangle quilt on the back.

Quilting Woes, among other things

I've had so much time this week to work on my triangle quilt along quilt.  I sat down last night after work and worked on the quilting for about two hours only to flip it over and discover......the dreaded wrinkles.  

The perfectionist in me says: "This is unacceptable.  You must remove everything and start again!  You won't love it if you don't!  That's all you'll ever notice in the quilt!!"

The realist in me says: "Big deal, so there's a wrinkle in the back.  It will take you twice and long to rip them all out and start over.  It is a handmade quilt, there are bound to be some hiccups along the way.  Accept it, learn from it, and move on."

So then the question becomes:  Do I rip out the two hours of sewing I did last night and start over to get the 'perfect' back? Or do I just accept it and move on?  What would you do?

While I was sitting at the computer contemplating my next steps and drowning in a pool of self-pity and doubt for my failure to make the perfect quilt, I had an unexpected visitor.  A bear came right up to the picture window, tore down one of our bird feeders, and proceeded to help itself to a hearty meal of sunflower seeds.  It certainly wasn't the largest bear I've ever seen but I tell you what, it scared the you-know-what out of me!  Ahh... the joys of country living.

Triangle Quilt Along - Making Progress

I finally had some time to work on my Triangle Quilt Along quilt.  Paula has graciously given us slow pokes and overachievers until July 31st for one final link up party and I'll tell you, I'm determined to meet that deadline.  I decided to spray baste this quilt since I've had trouble with pin basting on the last few projects I've done.

getting ready to baste

I picked up this fantastic Homegrown Bicycles on Cream fabric for the backing last time I was over at Keepsake Quilting.  It's the perfect amount of colorful and whimsy.  I had to piece the backing to make it large enough but I think I did a pretty good job of matching up the pattern.  From far away you won't even see the seam.

seam on backing fabric

The spray basting went really well too.  I started out by taping my backing fabric to the floor in our living room with painters tape.  Then I carefully spray basted the batting down to the backing, making sure to smooth out any wrinkles in the batting.  I used a nice, thin cotton batting that will make this quilt perfect for use on the sofa.

I always work from top to bottom in about 6 to 8 inch rows when spray basting.  It allows me to go slowly and correct any mistakes as they happen rather than getting the whole thing down and realizing there's a big wrinkle in the middle of the quilt.

In the past I've had difficulty with the quilt becoming sort of wonky and stretched as I worked but I was very careful with this one to only press and stretch top to bottom.  All those bias edges could have made for a nightmare!

I wasn't sure how I wanted to quilt this one.  Most of the ones I've seen are just following the lines of the blocks to create a diamond or triangle grid.  I wanted to do something a little different though.  I printed some isometric graph paper from this site and started sketching.  This is also where I print all of my graph paper when I want to draw out blocks or quilt patterns to visualize them before I start.  I still prefer good old graph paper over all of the fancy design programs when working out block designs.  I decided to go with some echo quilting, but in what will hopefully be an unexpected way.  

skteching designs

I got some pretty variegated purple and magenta thread to use for the quilting but neglected to capture a photo of it before I started.  It's a Coats & Clark cotton thread called Plum Shadows.  It will blend nicely in the darker ends of the quilt but really pop on top of the white, orange, green, and yellow blocks.  I'm hoping it will be nice.  My goal is to finish this quilt up this week while my husband is away on business.

quilting!

I'm linking up with Stitch by Stich for anything goes mondays.