Heaven's Gate baby quilt

On Saturday, the weather was absolutely beautiful........no wonder----November !

(old Benny Hill line--No birds, no bees, no flowers, no trees........no wonder--November !

Anyway, I took advantage of a beautiful afternoon, and I basted the little quilt on my front deck. It probably took me about an hour, I'd say.

I went to machine-quilt it today, and noticed that the top was sort of rumply compared to the back. I must have had the backing stretched a little tight in the basting frame. I know to watch out for that, but apparently I wasn't quite careful enough. Still, the center of the quilt went through the machine fairly trouble free, with only a little fudging, and when I got ready to mark the borders, I unbasted them, and re-basted, easing the fullness out to the edges.

I decided to hand-quilt the edges in a big country-stitch. I tried machine-quilting, but the design didn't lend itself well to that method........too much twisting and too much starting and stopping of the design. I finished one border tonight, so just three to go, and then the decision on what to use for the binding.

This new version of Fairfield's 80/20 cotton batting is wonderfully soft. It is more finished like a Warm and Natural cotton batting, kindof blanket-like, rather than the resiny-feeling of the old Cotton Classic. I don't know if I'd be able to get small stitches with my hand-quilting.......I'm intentionally making larger stitches for this border. But I love the feel that this batting is giving this little quilt. The true test will be in the final washed and dried product.

UPDATED Tuesday evening ! I've been knitting socks again !

I apologize that these pictures are not of the quality that I used to take in the old days of my sock-knitting, but I am so tickled to have these finished that I wanted to go ahead and get them posted.

It's been awhile since I finished any socks, and these were not as fun as ones that have an interesting design. It's the second pair that I've made for hubby, finishing his first pair immediately after his first stroke. He was fairly polite then, and accepted them and agreed to wear them whenever I told him he needed special socks for some occasion. But in the last six months, since his more recent strokes, he's shown a new interest, and kept asking when I was going to finish the second pair !

He really likes the color combination on these, as he is quite conservative. I like contrasting heels and toes, myself; it's a favorite feature on some of my own socks. The tan yarn was a gift of a partial skein, from a friend in Oklahoma (on Etsy), and I ran short at the end and had to make the second sock 2 rows shorter than the first (on paper........but it measures the same, so I may have mismarked my sheet). The toes are quite square, because he complained of tightness when I tapered the first pair like I do when I make socks for me. He's happy, though, so I'm satisfied.

The great thing is that now I can pick a fun design to try again !

Quilting-wise, I have most of the interior of the zigzag quilt machine-quilted, and need to decide upon a border quilting design.

Hubby and I enjoy seeing the changing leaves on our daily walks......

...he took quite a few photos a couple of days ago, so I'll share our walk with you.

This tree is right beside my driveway, behind our trailer.......it is the most glorious yellow.....a Maple tree, I think.

These other shots are from the little lane that leads up to our short street. It is just so beautiful, and smells so good........like wet foliage, and bark, and burning leaves, and......Tennessee ! The more beautiful shots included us, and I didn't want to expose you to our old faces........but you get the idea.

UPDATE: 9:00 P.M.

Oh, I'm tired........my back feels like it's breaking......and I'm happy ! Praise the LORD !

I just finished machine-quilting the border of the zigzag quilt. I did it in what turned out to be a plaid design...accidentally, mind you, but a happy accident. I still prefer the look of hand quilting, as it seems to be "in the quilt", rather than "on top of the quilt" (that's what machine-quilting reminds me of with that constant line of thread showing, rather than leaving the blank space between stitches like hand-quilting).

But I'm liking these ones that I'm getting done ! I think they are very nice.........the HodgePodge is on hubby's bed most every night, and by day it gives the room such a happy glow.

Advice needed !

Okay, here goes................the HodgePodge quilt MAY be finished. I finished machine-quilting it this morning, and spent this afternoon and evening binding it..........................

BUT................. I want to show you how I quilted the blocks and then, that's where I need the advice of someone who makes machine-quilted quilts.

Here's the block........(the color is off because it was photographed indoors under a bedside lamp.) As you can hopefully see, the block has two skinny sides and two fat sides, surrounding the inner 4 rectangles. I quilted across the skinny borders, and through the rectangles about 1 3/8 inches apart, but not in the fat borders. I did this intentionally, so that the quilt would not be totally quilted the same all over. Each block is rotated a half-turn, so when you look at the whole quilt, one block is quilted horizontally and the next is quilted vertically.

Now, the fat strips are 2 1/2 inches wide, and my worry is that this is too wide to leave unquilted. I thought that it would provide a different texture from the skinny quilting, but now I'm afraid that when the quilt gets its wonderful 'shrunken' look from the cotton batting (after laundering), the wider areas will look too 'poofy', and just look like I was too lazy to quilt more.

I need to know if 2 1/2 inches is too wide to leave unquilted in a quilt with cotton batting. Actually, it's 80%cotton/20%polyester, Cotton Classic. I'm not really worried about it moving around, just poofing up or looking funny, unquilted. Am I making sense?

The borders are quilted pretty narrowly too, as you can see here in this shot of one corner and one end.

I had a little bit of fun by inserting just 3 sections of a nice cable braid..........I just couldn't stand not to do a little something extra in that long unpieced expanse of fabric up the lefthand border.

At this point, I'm always anxious to get a new quilt thrown in the washer and dryer for that antiqued look, and yet, right now this one is so nice and flat....no waves or puckers anywhere.....I really like that too !

Not done, ......... but so close !

China wouldn't let me quit for the day without sharing with the world that she's going to be in on the making of this quilt all the way through.

Here she is inspecting the quality of my machine-quilting. She tells me not to be a snob......that some machine-quilting IS worthy of an heirloom quilt...........just not MY machine-quilting. But this one seems to be passing muster for a snuggly........if Mama would just quilt poking that flashing thing in where it doesn't belong.

P.S. Jodie (Anonymous), you're making me think that you discovered some Cotton Classic ! Don't you get my hopes up if it's not true..............WOO HOO !

Influence !

Oh, no ! Look what you wonderful girls have me doing.............I'm machine-quilting that top I just basted (of course, I thread-basted for my normal hand-quilting, and I have to fight to keep from pulling the basting out with the walking foot !)

I don't know how it'll go, or how the finished quilt will look..........I hope it goes SMOOTHLY, and that I still love the quilt when it's all done. Send your machine-quilting vibes and mojo my way today, 'kay?

EDIT--update : A person could get spoiled on this REALLY FAST ! In a few hours time, I got the entire center of this bed topper quilted by machine. This would have taken me weeks to quilt by hand. Of course, there's a place for each kind of quilting, but it finally dawned on me today that this was not an "heirloom" top, so why not try machine-quilting it ? ! ?

I think the cotton batting is what made the biggest difference between this project and the charity quilt that I tried in April. It had a polyester batting, and the top just ran from the back, causing puckers at the end of stitching lines. I had a little of that trying to happen today, but eased the fullness in with my trusty porcupine quill/stilletto.