Mike's quilt

is DONE!  Forgot to put his name and birth date on it, and neglected to sign and date any quilt so far, but I can go back to that. So, here it is!

 

As I mentioned in a previous post, the pattern is called Baby Bites and it was free from modern quilt relish.  I added the half square triangle borders just because I'm a sucker for punishment and I thought they'd add to the nautical feel.  My technique improved during the making of the quilt.  It really drove home that I have to cut and sew extremely accurately if I want stuff to come together right.  This one is wonky, my next will be much less so.

 

 

I've been influenced by lots of great quilters, the Fanning's, Harriet Hargrove, many more.  The lady who most blows me away today is Judy Madsen of Green Fairy Quilts.  I wish she had a quilt cam up and I could watch her for hours.  She does use long arm and I am on a 50 year old Kenmore zig zag, but I still try and emulate what I can.  I saw her ruler work video and just went nuts.  I searched for ruler work on a domestic machine and found these.  I practiced 4  diamonds and then did these, very pleased with the results.  I got a curved ruler too, it's a goal to use that one soon, but I really loved the straight one.  Quilt shops don't carry these, but I'm telling you, go online to accents in design and get one! FUN!

This is the fine line one.  There's another continuous curve one, the domestic machine link above should show it to you or search accents in design for the website.

 

 

The blue HST are much better than the red, but I was showing the circles here, sorry!

 

 

I was trying to free motion a feeling of waves in the navy blue and thought maybe for the red I'd use circles, like suns or lens flare in the sun.  The whole quilting was a bit tricky "relearning" FMQ on the older machine.  I ended up tracing two sizes of circles and then kind of free form joining them with some lines and free form circles.  Not great, but I am happy enough with the result.

 

 

It's done while the baby is still a baby, Mom likes it, and the baby's uncle said, "hey Mom, now you can start making your kids their own quilts".  Pretty good praise from my youngest son.  And so I will.  I've still got one more grand without a quilt, she's going on 10 so it can't be a crib quilt.

 

I visited a Janome dealer today to look at that darn machine with an 11 inch throat for quilting.  Tomorrow I have a job interview for a position that will pay me at least $10 more an hour and it's day shift too!!!!  Maybe that Janome could be my Christmas present to me.