Sunday, August 20, 2006

An inedible sandwich

Well you might call it progress. But it doesn't feel like progress! I finally got around to picking up the 'dropped' stitches my sewing machine graciously managed to leave along the final border on my quilt top. I'm convinced, after some good advice in comments when I posted about it a while back, that my Janome is not winding the bobbins very well. I've had this problem since I got the machine. Probably should take it in for a service I suppose...anyway, I'm going to hold the thread in my hand when the bobbins are winding on from now on. At least I know the tension will be there. The winding seems very loose at the moment, which, I think, is causing the machine to skip.

Anyway, I hand-stitched reinforcing stitches over the dodgy stitches last night, and today I made my very first quilt sandwich! For those non-quilters, it's the part where you put the backing, batting/wadding and quilt top all together ready for the actual quilting.

Fortunately, as it's a cot quilt it all fit nicely on my dining table. I stuck the backing down with masking tape and spread out the batting and quilt top before I pinned it all, starting from the centre. A couple of my pins didn't go all the way through, but I had the good sense to check them all before I moved it about too much!

Now it's ready for quilting - hoorah. Told you, not much progress, but progress nonetheless :)

I've also changed my mind a little on the quilting. I'm going to machine stitch in the ditch along the sashing seams. This will stabilise the whole thing and make handling the quilt a lot easier when I'm hand-quilting the fun bits. This should also help speed up the whole process and make it far less daunting! I might even get it finished while Romily is still sleeping in her cot!

Romy's been much better today. She's down for her sleep and let's hope it's a decent one! Anyway, I'm taking the opportunity to post here and hopefully catch up on a few blogs while I get the chance. Here's a photo from today. It's hard to photograph her at the moment, as she just wants to grab the camera and she can move quite fast now!

9 comments:

Leah Spencer said...

Wow! Her face looks like an angel's. :)

Susan said...

What a darling little girl! And the quilt is lovely - a real treasure for her. My older son treasures every quilt I've made for him. So does the younger one, but he can't keep hold of anything! LOL!

Tonya Ricucci said...

You're making great progress! Basting is one of most boring parts of making a quilt, so once you're over that hurdle you get to do the fun stuff.

Anonymous said...

I would say that shot of Romy was worth the wait. What a darling!

I agree with Tonya. The basting is boring, but once completed, a well-basted quilt is much easier to quilt.

Finn said...

Your sandwich looks lovely!! It's all quite amazing, isn't it, how we take a pile of cloth(like your new purchases) and make them into something so lovely and useful??

She just gets more and more beautiful...and that's amazing too..*VBS*

Heather B said...

Those eyes!

Judy said...

You look good to go and I think doing the ditch quilting will help out a lot for stability! I will give you one word of advice, for me personally, I pu about twice as many pins in my quilts. I usually try to go about every 3 to 4 inches with a pin, especially for free motion. You should be good for ditch quilting though with what you have there.

One more tip, I learned the hard way...be careful with your table top. The pins can scratch the heck out of the table when they go down and pop back up. I really tore up my sewing table and had to stain those spots and cover again with polyurathane.

I think the quilt is looking fabulous!! And I agree that this step is boring but has to be done to get to the good stuff!! GREAT job!

Laura said...

Your top looks great Lily! I bet you have it quilted by now. Romily is as sweet as ever! I was in the Walmart this past weekend and a sweet chubby cheeked blue eyed little girl was in the cart in front of us, she looked so much like Romily! She immediately popped in my mind!

Anonymous said...

Best of luck with the quilting, can't wait to see how it goes! Romily is such a cutie, I'm sure she'll really treasure her quilt.