I wasn’t planning on putting a border on this quilt but, in one of those serendipity moments, when I got home with the backing I worked out that I had just enough for a slim border:
The centre is now quilted with a spiral motif. I still have the border quilting to do and, slim as it is, there’s still a lot of area to cover. Back to it.
This small celebration quilt is the latest work on my design wall. Today my neighbours celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary - yes, SIXTY years of togetherness! - and I plan to present this quilt when we meet them for dinner this evening. L&M are an active couple - always busy out in their garden or pottering around the house and often to be heard playing table tennis (typically accompanied by gales of laughter).
I don’t have an extensive garden and I don’t play table tennis - but do I like to laugh, potter around, bounce things backwards and forward and stop to smell the flowers, including right here on this blog. And I just realised that yesterday was my four year blogging anniversary - I first tentatively stepped out into the blogosphere with this post and have enjoyed the ambience ever since. To mark this occasion, I’ve decided to expand the scope of my current giveaway so:
go into a draw for a small textile work that I hope to be able to show you tomorrow. You can sign up to the occasional newsletter on the subscription page and follow the prompts. You can also view Issue #2 online. Or you can leave a blog comment.
Thank you to all my readers and blogging friends. The world seems a smaller and more congenial place.
Signature quilts are a fine tradition in quiltmaking. I’ve made a few myself including:
Now I have another celebration signature quilt shaping up for my sister-in-law and her husband:
Take a look at Teri’s wedding-quilt-progress. Have you ever made a signature quilt?
Today we decorated to the strains of the Christmas carols. First we swapped out the display quilt with Christmas Carousel :
(See I told you every wall in this house gets some kind of sun. This photo was taken at 5.25pm and that gash of light is the late afternoon glare.) Then we pulled out the Christmas decorations which haven’t seen the light of day for two years since we were away last Christmas. It was like catching up with old friends. David set up the nativity, complete with nodding donkeys from his childhood: 
No Christmas tree. Love the smell but they die instantly in this climate. One day, I plan on making a large quilted wall hanging tree that we can pin decorations to. In the meantime, we spread the decorations around the fireplace and bookshelves. Mum is bringing the stockings with her from New Zealand next week. I wonder if Santa will work out where to find us…
There is a festive ATC (artist trading card) swap at tomorrow’s guild meeting. I don’t tend to make ATCs or textile postcards as I prefer to work on a bigger scale and am not much into embellishment. That said, I whipped up this ATC before breakfast this morning and found it quite fun:
And here is the trio:
Quilting can be a dangerous past time. My sewing came to an abrupt end yesterday as I managed to munch my index finger whilst free motion quilting. No nail or bone was involved. Just the flesh beside the nail. Accordingly, I decree that this Christmas quilt is finished:
My mother-in-law put in an order for a Christmas quilt so my Single Star Wreath design seemed the way to go:
I am “back to front” quilting using the backing fabric as my quilting guide to create a poinsettia and holly motif. I’ll post some images when I am a little further along and have sewn all my tails in. As I quilt, I am listening to the ABC call of today’s big cricket game (Prime Minister’s XI v England) on the radio. Summer cricket has begun - yippee!
PS: In the spirit of the season, if you purchase a Christmas Star Wreaths pattern or kit from my website, you will receive a bonus Single Star Wreath pattern at no extra charge.
I have almost finished quilting the new, as-yet unnamed, Christmas quilt. You will see that I opted for contour quilting about half an inch apart with a metallic gold thread. I quite like the effect although it is a little more “regular” than my usual quilting.
I am also using this quilt to experiment with a one of the facing techniques sent to me when I put out a query on how to finish a quilt without binding.
Actually, this is a variation of a technique sent to me by Kathy Loomis who has written an article for a forthcoming issue of Quilters Newsletter Magazine. In Kathy’s words:
Many times I think my quilts look better without a border or binding – just turned to the back with the quilting stitches running right off the edge and around the fold. You achieve this finish by stitching on a straight binding strip that folds over, encases the raw edge of the quilt and is sewed down by hand. Traditionally you bind the top and bottom first, then bind the sides, tucking in the ends of the vertical binding strips as neatly as possibly.
But I don’t like the lumpy corners that resulted from this method, even when I graded the edges carefully. And if the binding strip wasn’t the same color as the corner of the quilt, you could frequently see a bit of the binding on the corners because there was just too much fabric to bring it all invisibly to the back.
I thought there must be a better way - and developed a method that makes beautifully flat edges and corners, plus a neat looking back. The trick is to make a one-piece facing for the corners instead of binding each edge separately.
You can e-mail Kathy for a copy of her very clear instructions. (My variation is fold the side strips in half and to sew the corners in pairs and turn them inside out for a clean edge that doesn’t need to be folded under.)
Like many of my recent quilting efforts, when I started this quilt I had something different in mind but the quilt seems to have a mind of its own. Who am I to argue?
Of course, it means that I have yet another quilt top that requires quilting. I think I have to schedule some dedicated quilting time. I almost finished quilting Seaside Treasures yesterday but ran out of turquoise thread at a critical moment. No prizes for guessing what has been added to my shopping list when I go into the city tomorrow. If you enjoy threads, check out Lisa Call’s collection.
It’s starting to feel like Christmas here at Casa da Praia. Yes, I know 25 December is still many weeks away but we have been wrapping and posting gifts for surface mail to America. As I write, the mixed fruit is soaking in brandy for the Christmas cake and I have sorted out some fabrics for a Christmas quilt:
However, rest assured, there are no Christmas carols playing on my CD player.
©2006-2010 Brenda Gael Smith trading as Serendipity Patchwork & Quilting.
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