Quilting, Trimming and Organizing!

Hello Everyone! I hope your weekend has been a good one so far! This week I finished quilting the rainbow quilt, trimmed the County Fair blocks, and laid out a new mini quilt. On Friday, the local historical society had a free antique quilt show staged in the oldest home in Winchester. My husband went with me and we were both impressed with the number quilts on display in the house and the mill next to it.

This was one of my favorites, made with silks. The brown silk fabric was the wedding gown of the maker’s daughter (I think). The gown was made in the 1820’s, then the quilt was made in the late 1830’s or 40’s. I read the info, but can’t remember all the details, I just thought the quilting was exquisite in the open spaces and what a great memory to use the wedding gown in the quilt. It was in excellent condition compared to some of the cotton quilts.

I finished the quilting on my Moda Rainbow quilt, just using the straight line quilting. I told you that I planned to add more quilting in the white strip between the blocks, but after I finished, I liked the clean look it had. I’m going to wait on binding it until after I quilt the Scrappy Rainbow quilt.

I’m getting ready to start quilting this one, but haven’t fully decided on how I’m going to quilt it yet.

Once I finished quilting, I trimmed the County Fair blocks. The pattern is by Fig Tree and the fabrics are Christmas Figs. When I started trimming, I noticed, some blocks were 8 1/2″ like they were supposed to be and others were 8 3/8″. I had not cut the sashing pieces because I wanted to see what the block size would turn out to be. I think I have 17 of the 8 1/2″ and 13 of the 8 3/8″ I cut the sashing 8 1/2″ and will have to adjust the smaller ones by 1/16″ on each side. I can’t just trim the 8 1/2″ down because the flower points would be cut off.

These blocks were made over a 6 month period. I don’t know if I just sewed more accurately at some times or if it’s because I changed the Diagonal Sewing Tape by Cluck Cluck Sew. It was starting to peel up and it really helped when sewing all these flipped corners. I didn’t draw lines, just used the tape as my guide. I will go back and check the tape to make sure it’s in the correct position.

When I made the units for the County Fair blocks, I sewed an extra seam line on the large corners about 3/8″ from the original before trimming. I ended up with a lot of half square triangles that I was able to trim to 2″ unfinished. These are the ones leftover after planning a new mini quilt or pillow top.

I’m going to make the Pirouette Table Topper that’s in the “A Scrapebook of Quilts” by Carrie Nelson and Joanna Figueroa.

I will probably make this a small pillow and not add the border that’s on the table topper.

To help get a little more organized so my pieces aren’t crowed on the edge of the sewing table, I bought another rolling cart at Michael’s when they were on sale a couple of weeks ago. Now I can have the finished blocks handy with the sashing, all ready to sew and it won’t take up room on the sewing or ironing table. The blocks for the pillow are in the middle basket where I can pull out the board and work on piecing them while sewing the sashing and blocks together.

I’ve had another cart for several years so I can keep my sewing and quilting supplies close by. I also keep the thread containers in the bottom of the cart so it’s easy to change colors as needed. You can see my ironing table there ready to be used. With everything so handy, I do have to remember to get up and stretch every hour or so or I could sit there all day!

I felt like I accomplished a lot last week even though most mornings were taken up with errands. I’m going to try to get a lot accomplished this week, too. September and October are booking up fast with a few trips and a visit from our daughter.

I hope you all have a great week and thanks for stopping by!