It doesn't pay to be lazy!

When I designed this quilt in EQ7, I used a single block for the entire quilt. They’re eight inch blocks, divided into sixteen squares. I just recolored the squares according to how I wanted them to look.  The border blocks are simply four inch versions.

As soon as I’d finished with my design, I realized that the entire quilt would need to be redrawn with completely new blocks, otherwise it would have a gazillion pieces instead of minimizing them.  For example, four of these blocks fit together to make a snowball in the center.  That snowball has sixteen, two inch patches!  That’s pretty silly isn’t it?

But redrawing those blocks takes some time and effort, and by golly I really just wanted to sew… plus cutting a gazillion patches is easy peasy with the AccuQuilt.  So I took the lazy route, and didn’t redraw the quilt.  DOH!

It may have taken a bit of time to figure out new blocks, but I would have saved countless hours piecing.  I only just now finished the first border.  These border would be so much quicker if they weren’t all itsy bitsy blocks… not too mention my piecing would be much nicer with fewer patches!

So this quilt is a lesson to me!  Don’t be lazy!  It’s just more work later!  And I confess that I am not the most accurate piecer, especially when it comes to so many little patches.  My top border ended up being an entire inch off… on the large side.  If it weren’t for the nifty adjustable dual feed feature on my Bernina 830, I don’t know that I could have eased all that in!

Finished!

My first quilt on the APQS Millennium.  Nothing special, it’s just a small baby quilt, but I love the all over swirls!  This was the first time I’ve ever used a polyester batting, (Quilter’s Dream of course, that’s all I use) and it quilted up just lovely!  Very soft and I would never in a million years know it wasn’t cotton.

I used Isacord thread in a pale blue to do the swirls.  Initially I used a variegated cotton in bright primary colors (Sulky, which the Millennium handled with no problem!) but didn’t like it at all, and ended up frogging it all out.  Ugh.

I’m still not really comfortable enough with the Millennium to do much other than practice quilts on it, I confess I’m struggling with it over my HQ16.  Free motion is easier on the Millennium, as is ruler work, but pantos… OMG!  They are SO much easier for me on the HQ16.

Today I’ll be loading up more practice sheets… I’ve got a lot of work to do!

A valuable lesson learned!

I was putting the last border on the baby quilt, when I smelled something burning.  Oh no!  I’d left the little Clover iron on, sitting on my sewing table, and the quilt top was laying over it!

It didn’t quite burn through, but it left a nasty scorch mark in one of the center blocks.  So, I spent my afternoon taking apart the quilt, replacing the ruined block, then putting it all back together.  I lost the red border in the process sadly, and I don’t think it looks as good without it, but I didn’t have any red left, so it got two yellow borders instead.

You can be sure I won’t leave that iron on again!  Anyway, it’s finally finished, I just need to get around to quilting it.

It's almost as bad...

As a Schnibbles!  So many triangles and bias edges!  But, I’m nearly done.  The original pattern was way to small in my opinion, so I’m having fun expanding with borders.  The right side with the outer strip of yellow and blue will be the final borders, I still have to piece the top and bottom triangle borders.

I have been pondering how to quilt it when I finish, and I have a pantograph in my collection that I think would be just perfect for this.

What do you think?  Something with kites would also be good.  Since I’ll be doing an all over design, I would love a suggestion for a thread color, I’m leaning towards matching the lightest blue (I’ll be quilting this with Isacord thread).

I spent a good part of yesterday taking inventory of batting, thread and pantographs and getting them entered into my business software… ugh.  I have the longarm section of this website nearly finished (but not viewable to the public yet), business cards made, but I’m still working on a brochure.  I really dislike doing that stuff.  LOL