A little Rusty

Last week I finally put a quilt on my Handi Quilter frame to start quilting. I've got a massive backlog of quilt tops that need quilting. Now that I've graduated (yay!), I can finally spend some free time quilting some of these quilts.

To start and get back into the swing of things, I loaded this mini quilt based on my Dazzling Diamonds pattern on the frame to practice with.

A while back, I snapped this photo above. One of the things I love about paper piecing is that I can sketch out a few quilting ideas on the back of the quilt before I take the paper off.

Unfortunately, I discovered that my quilting skills are a bit rusty. I started doing that back and forth in the white, but I hated how it was turing out. I just couldn't get it to look right, so I ripped it out, twice. I then turned to my trusted loop quilting and liked that. I'm done with the white and started to move onto the blue, but I'm having tension issues. I'll rewind a bobbin sometime this week and will give it another go since I think the bobbin I'm using wasn't wound tight enough. I've got more unpicking to do to take the blue out, but fortunately it's all loose on the bottom, so it should go quick before I dive back in. 

Spin Art

About a year and a half ago I designed this fun paper pieced quilt that some of you might have seen hanging in the Michael Miller booth at QuiltCon and Quilt Market earlier this year. I was obsessed with the color coral when I made this quilt and just had to incorporate the two shades of coral and soft blue into a quilt. I might have to make another quilt using coral and mint sometime soon, my new favorite color to pair with coral. 

This quilt is made using Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids, my favorite solids to work with. I just find their hand-feel to be so soft and a pleasure to work with. This quilt uses the colors Clementine, Peach, Vanilla and Powder Blue. The clementine color has to be one of my favorites still that Michael Miller puts out. That's saying a lot given that my least favorite color of all time is orange (followed closely by brown). 

I quilted it on my HandiQuilter longer using SoFine #50 thread. It's been so long since I quilted it, but I'm pretty sure I used #402, a soft white. 

The free pattern for this quilt will be posted to the Michael Miller website soon. And of course, it's paper pieced for easy assembly!