Friday, March 18, 2011

Avoid turning to quilt side borders {and shoes :-) }

I am working on a One Block Wonder quilt.  I love these quilts - they are always so striking from a distance.  Because they are really busy, I usually recommend a pantograph of some kind.  In this case the owner chose clamshells along with two border treatments.


I avoid turning the quilt to do the side borders whenever possible.  It adds about an hour to the working time and quilting is already expensive, right?  I don't want to charge any more than necessary.  Here I have loosely chalked in a spine which was measured and planned before the quilt was loaded.  I quilt the leaves & curls as far as I can then lock my stitches.  When I advance the quilt I pick up where I left off.  Kinda like the rinse & repeat instructions on your shampoo.  You can see the thread tail where I started this stretch of border.

My biggest worry before I started this quilt was ... just how far will a 500 yard spool of Valdani thread take me?  I spent an hour before I took my first stitch finding a (somewhat) local store where I could get another spool if I needed one.  I am about two thirds of the way through quilting and I think I will make it.  Fingers crossed.

On a completely unrelated but always timely topic: SHOES.  My favorite thing in all the world, besides my dog & DH.  (DH & my dog?  hmm, could be a Freudian slip.)  Anyhow... there was a story in the paper the other day stating the average woman owns 17 pair of shoes.  Pfftt.  Where did they find those lightweights????  Without even digging I counted 26 in my front hall closet.  Not including boots or slippers or work shoes or the layer underneath the layer I could count. 

1 comment:

  1. Helen, Beautiful quilting. I just finished a quilt where I did the center portion with the Circle Lord Spirals, and feathers along the outer borders. I'm sorry, but I'm probably not going to do it this way again. Finding the sweet spot to stop stitching each row of the Circe Lord swirls just about did me under. Next time it's going to be Edge to Edge, not separate borders. Good luck with yours. I love your swirly leaf border.

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