Ingrid Whitcher

Progress …... Had the in-laws here last week, so no quilting, but have made more progress this week. The blue border is proving to be as fun as I anticipated. The thread matches the fabric perfectly, so the effect is pure texture. I have spent a little over 36 hours on it at this point. For you that have seen the full design, only the flying geese and the outer borders remain.

Well, another week gone – and a little more progress. This is such a busy time of year for our family that I don’t feel like I am getting in a lot of quilting time. The center area and borders are done.

Now I am working on a snails trail border. The design is all drawn on tracing paper, stitched through, pulled loose and then the detail work added. My kids are wonderful, careful paper pullers (as long as a movie is playing). Half of the snails trail border is complete with the fill, with the plan of it all being done by the end of the week. It is 25 hours and counting.

The next part will be faster – all free hand work!! (this is the part that I have been most looking forward to!)

Friends of ours have 6 brand new beagle puppies. With 2 dogs, 1 bunny and 3 lizards already at the house, I was not even tempted. But they sure are cute.

Well, I am in the second week of quilting. Things are going pretty well but tedious at this point. The process is slow but rewarding. The next border is started and the fill is done in 1 of the 4 sides. About 17 hours so far. No quilting this weekend – Mark’s birthday. (Unless I start to smother him and he shoos me out to the studio.)

Back of the quilt. (Sometimes I like the back better than the front.)

The summer sewing class registration is now open. Each class has a 5 student max limit. I am so looking forward to teaching young people again this summer. Maybe, I will get a young quilter out of the group.

Here are some of the projects we completed last summer.

I am so excited the have the Pensacola Quilter’s Guild next Opportunity quilt at my house and ready to be quilted. For those interested, I will try to keep a blog history. Sorry, no full photos until the big reveal for the Guild.

I was so grateful for the team that thread basted the quilt for me. I was nervous about it not being square when I started, so they took care of it for me. I am really enjoying having the quilt thread basted instead of pin basted in the simple fact that it is so much lighter. We also decided to use a wool batting. It has a higher loft ( puffy to get under the machine) but it is so much lighter.

I am having some spotty problems with puckering…so the seam ripper is coming out, but it is mainly with using the tracing paper designs. The loft of the wool batt is also helping with any fullness in the piecing.

Here are some initial pictures. I have a little over 12 hours in the quilting done.

Basting day. We basted it outside at a friend’s house. What a beautiful day.

The quilt in the machine and ready to start the center.

The center finished.

The back of the quilt after the large circle is done and the first border section started.

The half-circles are done. The tracing paper design is pinned in place and ready to quilt through.

I had a little problem in this border. The initial drawings that I had done were 1 1/2 inches too large, so I sat and re-drafted the design today. Since I had already quilted the blue border with a similar design, I was able to to free-hand draw the next border without getting the projector and my source drawings out. I guess the brain really does get “muscle memory” when quilting new designs.