Blogger's Quilt Festival - Huhu Wela Loa a Ula

Gak!  I've been eagerly anticipating November and the Blogger's Quilt Festival, not realizing that voting starts Nov. 1, but linking starts earlier! 

I'm entering Huhu Wela Loa a Ula, a Hawaiian quilt I started in 2004 in a weeklong class.  We learned the technique, completed the applique, and started the hand quilting.  

I picked it up again and plowed through many hours of hand quilting. Hawaiian quilts feature echo quilting around the applique. Choosing to put the applique on point meant that a lot of hand quilting would be necessary to fill in the corners, but I think it was the right choice for this design. 

This is easily the FO I'm proudest of.  The design is mine and I'm very happy with the execution of both the applique and the quilting, though some of the lines of stitches look very unpracticed (because they were!). 

I'm entering this in the Hand Quilted Category. I'm being sure to enjoy it, because there's no telling when another hand quilted one will get done. 

Stats:

Fabric: white-on-white and batik from JoAnns, circa 2004
Batting: Mountain Mist poly, low loft
Thread: Ollllld white "hand quilting" thread
Size: 28.5" square

Happy blogger's quilt festivities! 

How I Un-do Quilting

The orangest quilt in the history of human experience is coming along.  Turns out five rows of quilting at every seam is kind of a lot, so progress is steady but the road is long. 

I sprung for fancy wool batting (Quilter's Dream) and boy, is it puffy.  You can see in the picture above what nice definition this gives the quilting.  Given the puffiness, I probably should have basted a bit closer together, instead of in the middle of every tumbler (so, about every 6"), but basting took every bit of time I had, so meh, lesson learned. 

At first I thought I'd get progress in on this after the kids were asleep, but it turns out the baby is no longer interested in falling asleep and staying asleep on her own for a couple of hours a night.  Also turns out that I can knit a hat much more easily than I can knit a sock (???) while nursing her, so I've made smashing progress on a hat.  Not the Halloween hat I should be working on (not to mention the Halloween beard I should be working on), but TO BE FAIR... I haven't felt like working on those.  So. 

So, I mostly get the quilting done early in the morning before the house wakes up, or in those rare moments where both kids are happily occupied.  Not the clearest-headed time in my day.  So I was halfway down the next line when I realized that I'd put a third line in on one side of the tumbler, when I was only planning on doing two lines. 

My choices were: frog the line, leave it as a charming little mistake (spoiler: no such thing), or add a third line to all the seams.  That last one was briefly tempting, but no.  Not practical. 

As I'm mostly self-taught, where "taught" loosely means "kind of figured out an okay way to do things," I realized that the way I've been frogging quilting is not the fastest possible way.  I used to un-do by pulling out each individual stitch.  That is a silly way to do it!  This time it occurred to me that I could seam-rip the line of stitches about 3" from the tail, undo 4-5 stitches, and then pull. 

The short length of thread comes right out.  Much faster!  And it only took me six years to figure out! 

Happy crafting!

Basting Party

To the sounds of classical for baby and then dance party not so much for baby plus some screaming baby, we have progress:

Backing, thread-pulled and pressed

Batting, Quilter's Dream Wool

Top, pressed, thread-pulled, and still ORANGE.

Worries about backing and batting size were once again unfounded.  There is about a three-hour window to get this basted in before the magical quilt studio turns back into a dining room - hoping I don't have to ask Papa to take the long way home this evening.  

Happy Crafting!

Ninety One

When I started this quilt, it was so that I would have a nice background for photographing socks.

But when I started quilting again, I remembered that quilting is my first love.

Then things got crazy stressful, and I remembered that it's easier to knit on a pair of plain socks during a staff meeting than cutting, piecing, quilting, or even hand-binding.  So: pair 91 is done.