Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Working Up an Appetite

Here we are at the "Buck Moon" full moon for July already. I'm happy to report that I was able to go to Ellen Peters' Cat Whiskers Studio yesterday while the temperatures were still cool. Here is Ellen, below, getting my quilt loaded on to the big machine.


This quilt is a large log cabin at 97" by 99", roughly square. Its size presented some minor challenges with my 90" Warm & White batting. My batting was too skinny!
Fortunately, Ellen is always very generous with her personal batting scrap pile, so we found a piece that was a long skinny strip to tuck in on one side. Thanks, Ellen!


The design of this particular layout is credited to Cheryl in Iowa and I felt that it was complex enough to warrant very simple quilting. This is what the layout looked like before quilting.


I chose a very soft buff antique tan quilting thread for both the top and below on the bobbin.


Here I am, below, ready to start the 24 runs of large scale clam shells. The blocks themselves, at 8" square, provided a very good visual spacing mechanism as I worked across each row.


I quilted this pattern upside down, making approximately 4 inch wide letter "U's" that dipped halfway down the length of each block.
Then, every following row began with a skinny half of a "U" that aimed upwards to meet the middle of the curve of the previous row.


In this way, each row was automatically offset from the next row. The other benefit was that I was never stranded at the end of the row. I'd just drop down the side of the quilt a wee bit and continue on in the opposite direction.


More disturbing than having batting that wasn't wide enough for this behemoth, was discovering at the end of the quilting, that the backing barely made it to the edge! Yikes! My binding is going right out to the selvedge.


All's well that ends well, as Shakespeare said! We made it work.

Soon I was home to photograph the backing fabric. This was listed by Thousands Of Bolts as a "Gold" flannel cotton wide backing, but I'd say it is a warm tan or beige.


Below is another photo of it, but without the flash to show the quilting a little better. The quilting is nice and open so I hope that it will be a nice drapey quilt, albeit heavy.


The pattern is quite an old traditional favorite and I like the way it lets the fabrics speak.


The nicest thing is to know that it is quilted now and not just a pile of blocks gathering dust in a basket! Yippee!



Felix mixed some eggs with Panko seasoned breadcrumbs and flour and sauteed it all with big chunks of garden fresh zucchini. He put a lid on top of the wok to steam the zucchini as the breading browned. Boy, oh boy, was it ever good!


I was hungry after all that quilting!

Linking up to Whoop! Whoop! Friday. Link.

Happy sewing!






8 comments:

cityquilter grace said...

gorgeous finish there vic....

gayle said...

I can see where you would have worked up an appetite! Lovely quilt!

Samplings from Spring Creek said...

Beautiful Yikes on the batting and backing--glad you had enough

Janet O. said...

Wow, that was a close one on the backing.
Good of Ellen to share her batting scraps. You just squeaked under the wire on this one.
It is such a cozy quilt--nice quilting design.
That Felix of yours appears to be a wizard in the kitchen. : )

Wendy Caton Reed said...

I don't doubt that you were hungry after working on that delicious quilt!

Cathy said...

Those clamshells look great. I need to get a little more daring with my quilting. Awesome quilt. Seems like that went together quickly.

Zucchini recipe sounds good. I'm almost tired of eating zucchini and ready to save some for seed or shred and freeze some for zucchini bread this winter. On to tomatoes! Just had the first red ripe ones today. Yummmmy and juicy!

Lynn said...

Just beautiful. The simple quilting suits it just right. That recipe sounds yummy too - thanks for that.

Feathers in my Nest said...

Wow! Another Stunning Quilt Vic...Tell Felix I'll be right over to have some myself!

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