I whipped up these 2 fabric bowls this afternoon as a birthday gift for a friend of mine. Due to my broken leg we missed her birthday outing back in August. So tonight we are making up for it by having a small dinner party.
While my husband was busy in the kitchen all afternoon cooking... I was busy in the sewing room whipping up this set of bowls.
My first intention was to make one for me and one for her but I later decided that they looked so cute together that they needed to be given as a set! They are made from cotton quilting fabric from my stash and the 2 sides are fused to a layer of timtex for stiff support. The nice thing is that they are reversible and washable as well.
I was able to get my quilt sandwich built and even had some time to start the quilting on my 'fractured' quilt this weekend.
I set my ironing board next to my cutting table, adjusted it to the same height and I had just enough space to spread out the quilt backing to make my sandwich. I was happy about this... otherwise the quilt top and back would have had to be put into the UFO pile until I can get down onto the floor. And we all know what happens once I put something in the UFO pile, it just sits there forever and ever.
I ironed the backing and the topper, layed the backing right side down, then placed the batting and then my quilt top. I smoothed everything best I could and then started pinning it all in place. I decided to use a low loft 80/20 cotton/polyester batting.
I use curved quilting safety pins for my quilt sandwiches. They are on of the best quilting notions that I have, they make the pinning so much easier.Once I had it all pinned, I had to redo one area due to a wrinkle in the backing, I hung it up to view while I cleaned up my work area. I pondered and studied the quilt while cutting my scraps up into 2 inch squares for my scrap bag, I needed to let the quilt talk to me to decide how I was going to quilt it.
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| Quilt sandwich |
I consulted a book or 2, though about what I wanted to do, tested out a couple ideas in chalk. I finally decided to stitch in the ditch along the sashing and outlines of the blocks, stitch in the ditch on all the nine patch blocks, on the 'fractured' blocks I am doing a triangle repeat, and have not quite decided on what to do on the long strip pieced block. I am using a smoke mono filament thread and may switch to something else for the outer sashing.
The machine quilting takes a bit of time to do. About an hour per block, partly because of the detail, partly because I am a bit of a perfectionist and partly because I am trying to push myself outside of my normal quilting 'box'.
I will probably start on another sewing project while I am doing the quilting, just because it is brain intensive during the actual quilting and it gives me some breaks :)
