Well, this one makes me really happy! This quilt, Cascades, has been on our bed in AZ for two winters already, but was quilted only in the seams of the sashing. I had always planned to do some hand quilting on it and so we took it home to Alberta for the summer. When I went to buy some hand quilting thread Brenda mentioned that it might be hard to hand quilt because it was all batiks. Batiks are very finely woven and that makes it hard to get a hand quilting needle through. I thanked her for mentioning that and thought, this would work well on the new Q'nique. I think I've posted pictures of it on that machine.
Well, yesterday morning I finished the free motion quilting on this quilt. I did a lot more than I had planned, and I'm very happy with how it turned out. I started with the border. The first three leaves I sketched in with chalk and after that I quilted them free-motion.
The theme was more or less floral, blooms (or leaves) four on a center. As I went along I got better at it, and this is one of the later ones:
This quilt is now completely finished, packed in a big plastic zippered bag, ready to go back to Arizona. I'm happy!
I did take out the sweater that had been abandoned a few years ago. Last summer our younger daughter suggested a cure for the curling bottom of the sweater back: a ribbing should make it lay flat. Good idea!
Here you see I've started taking apart the back, four inches up from the bottom. The bottom is at the top in this photo. You can see how it wants to curl up. Wouldn't be nice on the back of the sweater!
In this close up you can see that above the "soon to be ribbing" I've inserted a circular needle to hold the stitches. That enables me to unravel the bottom 4" of the back. However, when yarn has been knitted for quite a while, it retains all the curlicues of the knit stitches and would not reknit nicely. So somehow we have to remove all those "bends" in the yarn. Here's how: I sprayed the hank of yarn that I wound from the bottom 4" with lots of cool water and then stretched it slightly to dry. It's drying on the inkle loom, very handy!
That worked well. Later in the day I was able to start knitting the ribbing. It's almost all finished now.
Another project that was restarted yesterday involves two high loft king sized polyester quilt batts that I bought a year ago to make a winter duvet for our bed. When I unrolled the batts I realized they were extremely wrinkled and could not be used as they were. What to do? I did some reading on the net and decided to dampen them and see if they relaxed with some moisture. I sprayed this batt quite thoroughly with cool water but here's the result. Not very good!
I wouldn't want to put that in a quilt!
This morning I took the other batt, stuffed it into the front loading washer -- and I do mean stuffed -- put it to rinse in cold water and then tried to spin it. I wouldn't spin because the washer hadn't emptied the water from the rinse. I guess it was just too much for the washer to handle.
I took the very wet batt--dripping wet--and hung it on the clothesline to dry. Here's the batt on the bed, finishing the drying process. Very much improved!
Tomorrow I'll wet the other batt and let it dry on the line. But I think I won't put it in the washer this time, maybe just spray it wet with the hose.
Also this week -- Yes, it's been a very productive week! --I finished the blocks for another "sample" Disappearing Four Patch to hang up in the LQS, just as an example of what can be done with changing the colour choices. These blocks need to be sewed together and then have a border added. I like it a lot!
Now I think I'll sit down in the Sun Space with a glass of iced tea and the latest library book. I just finished one this morning that I really enjoyed titled The Atomic City Girls by Janet Beard, about the young women who worked on uranium enrichment in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in 1944, '45, not knowing what it was they were working on. They were just told to move the knobs so that the dials stayed in the right range. Not until after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima were they told that they had been instrumental in making the uranium that went into the bomb. The story focuses on one young woman and her experiences there. This book was on the "new book display shelf". I recommend it.
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