12 Quilts

I've decided to finally finish up this navy Pioneer Braid that's been hanging around for-EVER as a set of five panels. I found these fabric "bricks" at a quilt guild auction and could not pass them up. I think I paid maybe $1.25 for a huge bag of them. I was immediately excited to start a Pioneer Braid...so excited that I didn't even consult a pattern, I just decided I wanted a navy background. I cut up navy squares and started building up the braids. Unfortunately, as a newer quilter, I didn't quite get the dimensions correct, so what's going to happen when I put the panels together is that the points on one side are going to be obliterated, for the most part, since very few have a quarter-inch seam available. You know what? That's ok. I will still love it. As for settings, let's take a look at some options. Option 1 are the alternating rows. Every other panel goes up, down. I'm finding this setting makes me slightly seasick. Opt...

I'm glad to say that I've got the miles and miles of binding made and attached to the quilt. Now comes the longest part for me: hand-stitching it down. I know, it would be so fast to machine stitch it but I'll be honest here, I really suck at am not good at that. I've practiced on potholders. It's not pretty. Ever. When I have to make a mile of binding, I wind it on a little plastic lid for a needle case. It really helps keep the binding from getting tangled up and I just set it on my lap and flip it over a couple of times every time I stop to adjust the binding I'm feeding. Works like a charm! My dear Juki goes a mile a minute on the straightaway but for the binding I slowed down. Notice I haven't trimmed the quilt all the way to the edge. I do that on purpose. When I'm ready to hand-stitch a section of binding, I trim once I'm ready to fold it over. It has saved me on a couple of occasions when I didn't get the binding attached...

After taking a long arm class last Fall, I quilted 2 quilts in order to get a little practice in. I also gave a top to a friend from the class so she could practice - what a treat to have her hand it back to me so all I had to do was put on the binding! Swapping Stars was a top that was ready for borders. I had a few extra blocks and decided I'd make a pillow tuck as well - they weren't my best blocks but they are made from some of my favorite fabrics and I decided they weren't THAT bad, particularly since I'm keeping this quilt.  It's a very bright quilt, made by me and my quilting friends on a Yahoo group as a row robin. I went for a pretty simple block called Swapper's Star from Quilters Cache  but I redrafted the instructions since my friends would be making 7 individual blocks instead of strip-piecing several of the same fabrics. I also asked the ladies to do something unusual - set it on point. I drafted instructions for this and they did a te...