Muses from a quilter.

Yeah, I'm pretty funny. One done and I'm a quilter. Even I'm rolling my eyes. BUT it is done. And I'm overall pretty happy with it. I used a red sheet from Ikea as the backing, primarily because I already owned it and have no other plans for it. I quilted it by stitching in the ditch. But I discovered that I have a hard time keeping it between the ditches. Is quilting a metaphor for live? Hmmm. If you look here, at the back, you can really see how wonky my quilting was (and a couple of bobbin jams that I didn't know about until it was done). It never occurred to me that my the weight of this would prevent the feed dogs from doing their job. So I really had to work at getting this thru the machine. It had no trouble making the stitches, just pulling it through. Perhaps there are tricks to this that I'm missing.

I didn't purchase the box of quilters' safety pins that I saw at Hancocks. I thought that was overkill and silly. Well, I was wrong. I pinned it all with my quilting straight pins (that I use for almost everything - I like the longer length). And started to quilt. Girlfriends, this was like trying to sew a porcupine. OUCH! I starting thinking in terms of the fastest way to get to pull out pins. And then they started to cooperate with me and just fell out randomly. That was just annoying.

I will say that I made this whole thing harder than it had to be. And it was still pretty easy. But it would have been easier and I would have gotten a better result if I'd used a formula for the proportions. I just started cutting, but if I'd done some research and made my blocks the right size and the right number of blocks, blah, blah, blah, then I would have gotten a quilt the "right" size instead of the snake blanket/husband shroud that it is. And I would have been able to use a binder maker for the binding, as my strips would have been a "standard" size. And, well, the whole pin thing. Repeat "OUCH!" I will use a higher loft and probably cotton batting next go-round. I just like the cotton weight. And this one is very low loft - only 1/4". (read, cheap). Color-wise - yeah, I'm kind of digging the rainbow affect the brightness of it. In fact, I would have preferred the pale orange to have been a bright yellow. I think it would have jumped more. But my next one will be a more muted palate. And likely a little more complex pattern. I'm thinking of using a jelly roll or other pre-selected option. So I can spend more time on the piecing and quilting and less on the cutting. And get a pretty color range.

Thursday was DH's birthday and our anniversary. 26 years. He got golf clothes and one of those workout watches that tracks your progress and stuff. He have me a gift certificate to the spa downstairs, so I spent yesterday morning being pampered with a massage and facial. Ahhh. But we ate far too much this weekend, I will definitely be looking to shed a couple of pounds -starting tomorrow (HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!)

As for our local bald eagle family, apparently the nest was raided by crows and the eggs destroyed. They blame the male (eagle - not crow) for not helping to guard the nest. He spent too little time with it. Guys are guys, whether they have fur or feathers, I suppose. But they haven't given up trying, yet. Mother nature hasn't flipped the mating switch for "it's too late in the season to make a baby", so they're still working on it. Maybe we'll get babies this year, afterall.