Close but no cigar

The tulip quilt is sooo close to being done. I got some awesome thread from the cross stitch store yesterday and quilted the last border today to give the feeling of wind. The thread is a blue with blue metallic and looks very subtle with whisps of shine.

Only problem is that I bought 40 yards of thread and ran out about 10 yards short!

Back to the cross stitch store tomorrow.

Finally finished the fence!

Well, here it is! I finally got all the little bitty parts between the fence posts quilted! And boy was it a chore. the pieces are as small as 0.75" square and so the stippling had to be very tiny. I use a very small needle and a fine polyester thread.

Stuck on the quilting

I am at an impass. I am just not sure how I want to quilt the rest of this tulip quilt

I have come up with two all over quilting patterns that I am interested in using, but I am not sure about them. I like these curlies for the blue "sky" part of the quilt.
And I thought about using these flowers for the fence part, but I don't think that is a dense enough pattern for this quilt.

I tried to do a pattern that looked like wood knots for the fence posts but it just didn't look right.

So I have decided to take suggestions. All of your lurkers out there, it is time to post a comment. Help me decide what to quilt for the rest of this tulip top.

the echo has died out

I finally finished echo quilting those tulips. I thought it would have to wait until tomorrow when I broke 3 needles in 20 minutes but I took a break and found another package of needles in my stash. These things happen when you are using a size 60/8 sharps machine needle.

Isn't it stunning?

Keep on Truckin'

I finally got back to quilting that tulip quilt today. I finished the flower outlining and now I am working on echo quilting the area around the flowers. You might wonder how I am marking my quilt top. I am using a yellow Sanford Verithin pencil (sharpened to a good point) and a flexible ruler that is made for tracing off curves. I am marking the echoes one ruler width from each other. I am using a domestic electronic Kenmore machine and an open toe darning foot while free motion quilting.

I may have mentioned that I have trilobal polyester thread from Coats and Clark in my bobbin. The black thread I used for outlining was also a trilobal polyester and is from Mettler. The thread I am using in the needle for the echo quilting is a butter cream color. It is a rayon machine embroidery thread from Coats and Clark.

Yellow Bunnies on Purple Backgrounds will haunt my dreams tonight

About 4 and a half hours later I have found over 130 bunnies. Whew!

Bunny Chasing

Today's obsession is the 180+ store online shop hop. I have bunnies running through my mind, my stash, my bobbin race! You can chase bunnies too.

Kudos to "Life's A Stitch"

I have to put in a glowing review for an online store that I recently purchased some quilting items from.

I had been looking for the panel fabric from Mark Lipinski's Katmandu line by Troy for an activity for the Algonquin Quilters' Guild . The Troy website listed a number of locations that carried all 44 different fabrics from the Katmandu line. I did a little research and found that although the panel was listed as only 24 inches wide, most of the stores were selling the panels for $6.50 to $7.00 each! That's $9.75 to $10.50 a yard! Life's a Stitch listed all the fabric in the line at $4.25 a half yard, including the panels.

So I called Life's a Stitch in Connecticut on Monday night. I needed 8 panels and didn't know how to enter my order correctly because the order form wanted yardage. I received a return call on Tuesday morning but alas, I was not available at the time. Pete took a message. Karen told him that I could call as late as 10 PM eastern! I returned her call in the early afternoon and she answered very quickly.

Karen was very accommodating and personable. We discussed my needs, the intention of the fabric and we even got to talking about spouses and children a little. I asked that she fax a receipt to me so that I could get reimbursed at my Thursday guild meeting. Although she was unable to fax a receipt to me and I could not place my order online (because of the panel yardage thing), she agreed to send a receipt via post that afternoon.

I was floored when I went to the mailbox on Thursday morning and found that I had not received a receipt but that the fabric itself had arrived in only 36 hours via USPS priority mail! To make the experience even better, Life's a Stitch's shipping policy is to charge for only the actual shipping costs via the most economical shipping method that is readily available. She even said that if they can get it in a flat rate envelope, they will certainly try to do so.

So thank you, Karen, for being so helpful. I received my reimbursement at my guild meeting this evening and everyone is looking forward to our embellishment demo next month.

Back to the Polyester

I did a bit of quilting yesterday on the red tulip. After only an hour or so, I was having trouble. The cotton thread just kept breaking. I decided that because it wasn't a long staple thread, it just couldn't handle going through the paint on the panel. It was time to go back to using the polyester thread.

Since switching back to polyester thread in the needle, not only have I had no problem with thread breakage, but the back of the quilt looks even better. The areas where I took a few stitches in place to secure the beginning and end of a line of stitching have little nests of black cotton thread on the back of the quilt. The areas where I began and ended the stitching in the same manner using the polyester thread is cleaner.

I am still not happy with the amount of black thread showing on the back of the quilt but my guess is that there is little I could do about that save changing needle thread color. I am only going to use the black to outline the flowers and leaves. After that I will switch to white and quilt around the flowers. I haven't decided if I will do a random pattern around the flowers or if I will simply echo quilt them. I am leaning toward echo quilting.

TEX weight and motivation

I looked into the weight of the black thread I have here at home. It is a 50 weight mercerized cotton. I think it will be fine for a wall quilt. It isn't a long staple thread but it is a wall quilt and this thread will only be used for a small portion of the quilt.

On the other hand I am having trouble getting motivated today. There are a few quilting shows on public television this afternoon. Maybe watching one of those will be inspiration to get moving. In the mean time I guess I could get some lunch and do some web surfing for quilt pattern ideas.

Getting Around to Quilting

It never fails. I wake up every morning with every intention of getting some quilting done but it rarely seems to happen. Something always seems to get in the way. Some days I can pinpoint exactly what happened that kept me from quilting. Today is not one of those days.

So let's see... what DID I do today? Woke up, watched a little TV, did some web surfing, made lunch, emptied the dishwasher, reloaded the dishwasher, made plans to go embellishment shopping tomorrow, cleaned the kitchen counters and sink, did some more web surfing, made dinner, watched TV with Pete, built a blog. Wait a minute! I did do some quilting! I think it happened somewhere between web surfing and making dinner. I managed to get about 2 inches of my tulip quilt quilted. Hooray for me!

But now that I look at it, I may tear it out. I am not sure that I like the thread I used. Trilobal polyester in both the bobbin and the needle. Can't see the stitches on the front. Not sure I like that. If I am going to go to all the trouble to very carefully quilt this with very tiny stitches, I might want to be able to see them.

Maybe I will do a test run of some black cotton thread in the needle on the tulip quilt tomorrow. If I find the time. If nothing keeps me from quilting.

I wonder what the Tex number is on the black cotton thread I have