Gosh, it's been a minute...sorry I disappeared on you! Crazy stuff happened in February and the month just completely got away from me. Wow.
Let me tell you, I was all kinds of excited before Snowmageddon hit here. I was excited about cold temps, some snow, some Winter Weather. Because I'm that person. And Winter Weather in Texas? That's something to get excited about!
Aaaaaand then, we all know what happened. Whether or not you were looking forward to the cold weather, what the majority of us did not anticipate were the massive, days-long power outages, water outages, phone and internet outages...yeah, I know I didn't. ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) quickly became EFOT (Electric Failure of Texas). Rolling blackouts, my hiney! I'm still so mad about the whole thing that I can hardly think straight, and I haven't even received my Entergy bill for last month yet, so I may be a Crazy Person when that happens.
In summary, we had a lovely week of mid-February winter weather that no one got to enjoy. I sure didn't because, like the rest of Houston, I was without power and various other utilities. Something would come on, then something would go out. As I write this, there are some pockets of residents that STILL don't have water. Because the pumping and filtration stations need - you guessed it - power. Last week, people were still trying to catch up on lost work, repair damage from burst pipes, and navigate the political fallout. We were the people staggering out of the dark into the sunlight and wondering what the hell just happened. Many are still staggering.
OK, let me climb out of my rabbit hole because I'm clearly still having some feelings about All Of That.
I believe I promised Part III of the Quilted Story: Wrangling the Beast in the Machine. Before we get to that, however, I just want to show you this adorable little bag that my daughter made for me. It's a drawstring pouch, crocheted in this dreamy, silky, blue-gray color yarn that is wrapped in a soft silvery thread. The bag is small-ish, only about six inches tall. At the string ends, she attached some lovely jade pieces from an old broken bracelet I had lying around. In addition to the love she infused in this little pouch while making it, she also put some healing stones in it that she had cleansed and selected for me. I tuck it under my pillow at night.
Isn't that the sweetest? I love it. She picked up crocheting last year and has gotten so good, so fast.
Alrighty, on to Part III of this series! When last we checked in, the Beautiful Beast was sandwiched and all the layers were basted together with A Lot of safety pins. Ready for quilting!
When I first began quilting many moons ago, I hand quilted all of my quilts. I love working by hand, for me it's just incredibly relaxing and also I find it easier to manipulate/maneuver the fabric when I get into tight spots. But hand quilting is slow...verrry verrrrrrrry slooowwww. So slow. It can take more than a year for me to finish a bed-sized quilt by hand. Time was the deciding factor in my choice to machine quilt this one, as I wanted to have it ready to give to my sister for Christmas. Actually, it was originally intended to be her birthday present three months earlier in September. Yeah. That didn't happen.
Once I made the decision to machine quilt, I began to plot and mark the quilt design on the top. I've been using my niece's sewing machine, which she so generously loaned to me for many months while mine is stuck in storage in New York. Stephanie's machine allows for straight or zig-zag stitching, and I used a walking foot, which is a presser foot on the machine that allows for a more even pace of sewing through thick and/or multiple layers.
In marking the quilt design, I immediately discovered a bit of a dilemma: those blooms in the center panel. I really didn't want to straight stitch over them, because then the delicate dimensions of all those "petals" would be lost. I decided to hand quilt the blooms, and I'm so glad I did! The hand-quilting
really gave those blooms some well-deserved depth and texture...
It took awhile, but the effect was well worth it. Now The Beast goes under the needle...
My groovy quilting gloves have grippy stuff on the fingertips. Besides being just kinda trippy in an I-am-so-very-easily-amused kind of way, they do actually serve a purpose. When you have a Beast under the machine, it's hard to hold onto that Whole Thing while you're sewing it, so the grippy bits give you some traction on the fabric without having to tug at it constantly. A bed sized quilt means a lot of fabric on and off the machine bed. The side that has to fit in the machine's arm is rolled up, and the side on the outside is just all phlomped up onto the table so that the weight of it doesn't pull and distort the sewing. Pro tip: set a timer so you can get up and stretch every 30 minutes and roll those shoulders! Thirty minutes doing this is equivalent to driving in a snowstorm; the hunched shoulders and white knuckles are for real!
I also decided to do some wavy-line hand quilting on the black border bands, to offset all of those straight lines...
And every so often, I got out the Wonder Tool: a lint roller. Just when all the bits of stray threads, clippings and batting started to make me twitch, a few good swipes across the surface and all is calm again...
Muuuuuch better, ah.
I would do machine quilting for a while, and then take a break with some hand quilting on those center blooms. Here's a good shot of just how much fabric we're talking about...
Yep. That's a lotta quilt.
And now, a moment we've all been waiting for: Done and dusted on the quilting! Or maybe it's just me that's been waiting for this moment. Whatever. It's here!
After all that scrunching, smooshing, stitching and phlomping, this next part is sooooo satisfying. It's time to clean off the edges and get ready for the final step of binding. I love laying the quilt out flat, getting out that rotary cutter and slashing away...
Nice clean edges! By the way, I really like this rotary cutter. The design allows the (very sharp) blade to retract when the handle is released. I'm betting it was invented by a quilter that spent some time in an ER waiting room with her bleeding hand wrapped up after accidentally slicing it open with a rotary cutter. Please be careful around these tools, no joke. They'll slice through a tendon like it's buttahh. *Shivers Down the Spine*
Well, that's it for today. In the Grande Finale of the series, we'll get the binding on this Bad Boy and out the door, just in time for Christmas.
Stay warm, be well, and get outside for a bit of sunshine if you have it.
đŸ’—Bonnie
Beautiful!!
ReplyDelete