Making steady progress on Justin's quilt

I got the next section of bright blue and the navy and white striped quilted.

There can be no messin' about this weekend. I made my list and hung it on my empty design wall. My list includes cleaning out the garage, digging up the canna's to overwinter, planting my purple cora bell, putting protection fencing around one of my evergreen trees, make the screen panels for my brother, and of course work on Justin's quilt. The weather is suppose to be nice on Saturday so I will try to get the outside work done - it could be my last chance this year.

Have a great weekend!

Duvetyne and Justin's quilt

Eight yards of duvetyne was sitting outside my front door when I finally got home from a crazy day at work. The duvetyne is a fire resistance fabric used for curtains for stages. For the big show next weekend, my brother wanted to make a screen for the side of the stage so he could work on guitars and be available for any technical problems. He can sit behind the screen with all his equipment and extra guitars for Michael without being a distraction. Now I just need to get some measurements from him so I can get a couple screen panels made up.

I got the gold and orange section quilted last evening and I started on the green plaid taffada long piece bordering the gold/orange section this morning. I am happy with the steady progress I am making on this project and do not see any reason why I won't have it done for the 22nd of November.

Have you ever free motion quilted seersucker?

Well, I did last evening and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I now have this corner of Justin's quilt quilted.

This morning I had some extra time before I had to leave for work so I wound bobbins with orange and gold thread for the next striped section I will work on quilting tonight. The machine is all threaded and ready to go!

I can't believe it is Wednesday already. This week is flying! The sky was beautiful this morning. It was so warm last evening I had one window open all night! Crazy weather for November! I have to run errands for work today so I drove the car - it would have been nice to ride the bike again. I rode the bike Monday and Tuesday. We are suppose to get rain later on today so I want to get the errands run before the job sites turn into mud.

Progress on Justin's quilt and new lights for the studio

I went thru my quilting thread and I think I found most of the colors I need for Justin's quilt. There are a lot of colors in this piece!

I started quilting it last evening. I used a walking foot first quilting the long red and green plaid piece.

I didn't have any problems so I decided to try and free motion the tan and plaid fabric. It is cotton, but the backing in this area is a cotton/poly blend. I went slow and so far no issues. I think the problem I had on the polyester quilt I did earlier this summer was that the batting was also polyester. I am using 80/20 and it is going fine. I will know more once I try free motion quilting a 100% polyester fabric like the brown with white polka dots.
Here is the front and back of what is quilted so far.

This weekend I picked up some new overhead lights for the studio. The lights that are in there are original to the house. Even with the lights on the room is dark!

I read Melody Johnson's blog, Fibermania, and she and Dave are in the middle of a big remodeling project. She had bought new lights for her relocated sewing studio and I asked her what she bought. She was so kind to reply and this weekend I stopped at Lowe's and found the lights. After the two day gig the band is participating in on November 15 and 16th, my brother said he would come and help me again on the house. I will need to paint the ceiling before installing the lights. It needs painted bad.

The big gig Nov. 15 and 16 is a benefit for Sonny Geraci who was a member of the 60's bands Climax and The Outsiders and is from Cleveland, Ohio. He has suffered a brain aneurism and the medical bills are huge. He is recovering slowly. There are over 20 acts coming into town to play. Michael's band gets to play and has been billed as the house band. There are promoters and music people coming in from all over the country to support the event. Now Michael is only 15 years old and he came up with the idea of buying guitar pics with the event logo on them to give to all the performers. What a thoughtful kid! Here is what the pics look like.

Someone emailed him back after they got the email for the pics and told him to have lots of CD's to sign! Looks like I will be very busy at the merchandise table!

Justin's piece and my new light

I didn't get much done Saturday because I was just tired. Sunday I was feeling good and got to work finishing up the top of Justin's quilt. I am very pleased with the way it came out. For the back of the quilt I cut out the backs and some of the front pieces without pockets then sewed those together. Here is the quilt laid out and almost all pin basted together. Since some of the fabrics are slippery I put my pins closer together to really hold it together. I will finish pin basting it at lunch today so that I can start quilting it tonight.

I made a quick trip to JoAnns to get some embroidery floss. I finally found my floss box so I am now all ready to put some big stitch quilting on this piece along with some machine quilting.

I had a couple of coupons, one being a 50% off so while I was at JoAnns I got to looking at the Ott lights. I found one that is rechargeable. This will serve a dual purpose. In a couple of week the band has a very important gig - more to come on that. While I sit at the merchandise table, I plan on doing the hand work on Justin's quilt and this light will be perfect for that. Also, when we go to load out the trailer, we can use it to help us see. The place we are going, if I remember correctly, has no lighting in the back of the building. I turned off the lights in the sewing room and closed the blind to try the light out and it will give us plenty of light to see loading. The light has a nifty carrying handle too. I think I will make a padded case for it to help protect it. I had $33.00 in gift cards for JoAnns and with the 50% off coupon the light only cost me $17.00 out of pocket.

Big progress on Justin's quilt

Yesterday at lunch I spent some time sewing together parts for this quilt and finished up the sewing and pressing of the parts last evening. I finally had enough parts to start designing. Here is the first layout

Next I added in scraps of fabrics Justin had used in clothes he had made

I added a few more bits and here is what it looked like when I went to bed. This morning I still like it!

I still need to add a bit of these two fabrics. I will add them where needed as I start to sew the top together.

I am going to have to do some hand stitching on this piece because of the non-cotton fabrics. I went looking for hand quilting thread and I only have off white. I donated all my colored hand quilting thread to a charity. Hum- what next? I looked at my pearl cotton and I have a few colors that would work, but I have No. 8 which is heavy and is hard to pull thru. Joanna gave a demo on big stitch quilting at our last Modern Quilt Guild meeting and she had I think some No. 12 and it was wonderful! I just don't want to spend a lot of money for pearl cotton on some of these weird colors and I don't even know where she bought hers. I will have to e-mail her. In the meantime here are a piece she showed us at the meeting with big stitching. Isn't it wonderful?

My next thought was to use embroidery floss. I have a case full of floss, but I could not find it this morning. I will have to dig deeper into the closet and see if I can find it.

So this weekend I will hopefully get this top sewn together, put together a backing with the back sections of the shirts (lots of fabric there!), and start stitching on this.

Have a great weekend!

Conquering fears and making a decision

I have been looking at the clothes and fabric for Justin's quilt as they have hung on the design wall all summer.

The thoughts in my head were saying what if he doesn't like what I do? How am I going to design this/ What should it look like? Yes, all those self-doubts were creeping in. But then Justin has always loved everything I have done, so I need to put on my big girl pants and just dive in! The other mental roadblock was that I had too much fabric especially when this is going to be a smaller wall hanging. You know how I even make my baby quilts big so small is a challenge for me! Well, I was up early this morning and it hit me to start out by limiting myself to using one sleeve of each garment thus reducing the amount of fabric I had to work with. That worked and I started making parts.

After making the first cut into the first sleeve I feel so free and excited about this project! All the doubts are gone and it is full steam ahead! I will have to deal with the types of fabric that I am working with in a slightly different way when it comes to quilting this piece. There is a lot of poly/cotton blends which of course I never use, but this is a special project and I am excited to see what I learn from doing this. I would love to get it done by Nov. 22. I will be at the art museum that evening working an opening exhibit reception and I know Justin will be there.