Customer Quilt

Yesterday was my last chance to use the car before Jeff took it for two weeks to visit his family. I was hoping to find some more rust-colored fabric. It was slim pickings. Apparently rust is not in style right now. I went to three stores and I only found one decent match. That beige also isn't in style either. 

I had enough fabric to finish Chilhowie, but I'm hoping to make a second lap quilt from the same color fabrics (in a different pattern) and it would be nice to have some overlap.

Today, I worked on a paid quilting gig. It's a pretty scrappy baby quilt. I quilted it with Wholehearted by Christy Dillon. I used a bright fuschia Maxi-Lock thread and it turned out well.

Now that I have finished all the projects with a deadline, I can get back to finishing the Chilhowie lap quilt. I've prewashed the new fabrics so I'll try to finish cutting out all the pieces tomorrow.

Chilhowie Sashed

Jeff and I have been pretty busy during the days so I mostly only take time to sew at night after he goes to bed. Of course, that means I often end up staying up pretty late. Oh well. Jeff will be leaving on a trip in a couple of days to visit his family so I'll have plenty of time to finish then.

I've started cutting out the border pieces, but that will take a while because I'm not using the Cricut. The Cricut is very fast, but it does waste a bit of fabric and I'm short on the rust fabrics so I need to conserve them. 

Someone dropped off a paid quilting gig so first I need to finish that before I get back to this project. I'm eager to finish this flimsy.

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Put Your Foot Down

Chilhowie Progress

I sewed up a storm this past weekend. I've finished all the Chilhowie blocks. 

Now I still need to make the sashing and add a fairly detailed border. I'm happy to finally be in the mood to sew again.

But first, I actually need to turn my attention back to the Easy Street quilt on my long arm. I've received the extra piece of fabric and it's time to get it going again. I need to finish it before my husband goes to visit his family next week.

Linking up with Design Wall Monday, Monday Show & Tell, and Monday Musings.

Chilhowie Started

I am finally making progress on my Chilhowie throw quilt. One drawback of buying fabric online is sometimes it can take a very long time to receive it. I decided I didn't want to wait for the brown fabric, so I went ahead and cut the burgundy fabric I had on-hand. 

I finished sewing Clue 1: The 9-patches and 4-patches. 

I'm using a new-to-me sewing machine and I've been having a bit of an issue with sizing my 1/4-inch seam allowance correctly. I think I've finally gotten it dialed in, but some of these nine patches are about 1/8-inch too small. I'm not quite obsessive enough to rip them apart and make them right. I'll fiddle with the seam allowance when I sew the quilt together.

I'm going to skip to Clue 3 next and work on the Hourglasses. I'm trying to make the block components first so I can start assembling the blocks, then I'll worry about cutting out the sashing and border.

Linking up with Design Wall Monday.

Maybe Chilhowie Next

I really meant to make Bonnie Hunter's Chilhowie Mystery Quilt when it first came out, but at the time I was working on several Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects. But I've had it in my project queue since then.

I'm finally in the mood to make another quilt, so I'm thinking about making a throw-size Chilhowie in colors that coordinate with our living room. I dug through my stash and found these fabrics that match pretty well. I may replace that dark rust with a brown, as I ordered a brown batik when I ordered more of that quilt backing.

Now I'm trying to figure out the arrangement of colors in the quilt. It seems like it would be a straight-forward substitution, but when I put these fabric colors into Electric Quilt I worry the colors are too dark.

Then I started substituting some lighter fabrics. Perhaps I'm overthinking it, but here are some of the other options I've come up with.

I'll probably make my final decision when my brown fabric arrives. When you order online, you can never be sure what the color actually is until you get the fabric.

Just Missed It

I should have spent less time procrastinating and gotten to work on quilting the Easy Street quilt sooner because now I won't make it before the end of the month. I definitely underestimated how long this quilting project would take.

Each row took about 60 minutes to stitch out and then about 20 more to forward the quilt and re-align each row. There are eight rows. I started before Thanksgiving but didn't get back to it until this morning. I thought I would have been able to finish today, but then I lost at backing chicken. I expected it would be close, but I would make it. Sadly, not.

Fixing this is not an end-of-day project, I'd end up staying up too late. I'll have to figure out how to finish this tomorrow morning.

Update: I figured out where I bought that backing fabric (Marshall Dry Goods) and they were almost out, so I just ordered another piece. I guess it will be more like a week before I get this finished because I have to wait for it to arrive and then pre-wash it before I can continue on this project.

Nine Patch Twirl Quilted

I finally got the Nine Patch Twirl on the long arm today and quilted it up. I decided to try a fun pantograph for this one.

I like the way this one turned out. I used inexpensive Navy MaxiLock serger thread and polyester batting scraps.

The pantograph is the Color E2E from Anne Bright Designs. It's a really large design but was fun.