It's a Topper!

This will be my final posting of the my work in progress on Swamp Hibiscus. The border and blanket stitching are done and now it's on to piecing the back, pinning and THEN quilting. I leave for Hendersonville tomorrow for (I hope) 2 weeks and so the pinning will have to wait until I come back to Charleston where I have a big enough floor to lay it out on (yes, I STILL get down on the floor to pin). I'm really pleased with how it's turned out and now my general nervousness will set in about just how to proceed with the quilting. I know it will work out, but . . .

One thing I've been doing while spending more time than I had planned on in Charleston is finishing up some of my unfinished projects. This is one that I started about four years ago at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival. It was a needleturn applique class with Linda Cantrell. One of the unique "twists" in this class was that you ironed all of the applique pieces onto freezer paper, ironed under the raw edges and then glued the entire piece onto the background fabric. You cut away the backing as you go. It's kind of tough in the beginning because there is so much stiffness to the work, but you get the reward of seeing the entire piece from the start. I actually have had the entire piece finished for years, but just added the borders. I'll be taking it with me to the mountains and will quilt it up there. It won't take long and will make a nice Christmas present for someone.

That's it for now. Hope things are going well with everyone.

The View

Whew! I just realized how long it has been since I last posted anything. This has been a hard few weeks dealing with a very weak and ill mother-in-law with little time left for anything else. One thing that is a comfort to us when we have to deal with life's unpleasant happenings is the view from our window. We drink our coffee every morning looking out at this beautiful bit of our environment and read our meditations and somehow find some kind of center to maintain our balance in this world. I was so disappointed that I didn't get to see the fall color this year; however, even I--a mountain girl--had to admit that that golden hue of the marsh grass looks pretty darn good. As we were sitting and looking out this morning, fish were literally jumping all over the place! And they were BIG! We were discussing the various ways we could cook them if only we had a fishing license (not really). I saw my neighbor shortly afterwards and he said he caught 16 fish in about 15 minutes. The only thing was . . .they were mullet, not the bass I had been envisioning. Oh well--he threw them back into the drink, but we all had a little excitement.

I had brought my Swamp Hibiscus quilt back to Charleston with me to work on while I was here and when it came time to do the blanket stitiching around my applique, I was in trouble. I had used my Bernina up in the mountains to do much of it and neither of the machines I have here in Charleston have a blanket stitch that even comes close to the quality of the Bernina one (at least in my opinion). One of the machines is quite expensive but it just didn't measure up.

So . . .I asked my daughter-in-law (to whom I had given my Bernina 200) if I could borrow it long enough to do the stitching. She, of course, said yes and I trotted home with it. I started sewing and was just about overwhelmed with how much I missed that machine (I gave it away because I wasn't getting good service from the dealer). Since we have a good dealer in Hendersonville, my sweet husband said that I must get another one like the 200 (I don't know the model number now). Although I thought it was pretty great of him to say that, I really thought it came under the category of trying to make yourself feel better when you're under family stress and I felt I had him at a disadvantage (would that be WRONG? I would have to say probably.)

Anyway, when I told my daughter-in-law just how much I had enjoyed using my old friend and that I hoped to get another one sometime, she immediately told me to keep it, that she really didn't have the time to use it (she's going to college). I was really overwhelmed by her kindness and wanted to do something for her. I have packed up my other top-of-the-line machine and it will be hers when she is ready for it. But I also wanted to do something immediate and offered to quilt one of her unfinished projects. This is the one she chose--a project from a Myrtle Beach Quilt Party weekend. I really enjoyed doing it because it was something where I could sit down at my Juki and go almost into automatic and listen to books on tape. I was pleased with how it turned out and I think she was, too.

And so, I have had a wonderful reunion with my Bernina 200. I know that other machine owners could say just as many wonderful things about their own particular brand of machines--it's just a matter about what suits our own needs and ease of operation. I like the heft of the Bernina presser feet and I like the way certain stitches stitch and I like some of the features that are unique to the Bernina and I am used to. And, I am almost finished with my Swamp Hibscus quilt top and will post it soon.

Moving Right Along

Thought I'd post the next completed step of my Swamp Hibicus quilt. I finished the borders today and now I have to decide what to put on top of the border fabric.

The little "squiggles" on the upper right border are just pieces of fabric placed to think about color and shape. After I decide on what to put there--and actually PUT it there--I'll be finished. And then on to the quilting! I took the picture of the swamp hibiscus over a year ago and have been thinking about it ever since. It is such a beautiful and delicate flower; and yet, unlike the typical hibiscus that one buys at Lowe's, it dies down in the winter and regenerates in the spring. As well as seeing the in Charleston, I saw several huge plants at the Arboretum in Asheville this summer, so I'm hopeful that I can have a plant in my yard in Hendersonville.

The beautiful Angel's Trumpet (which will be a quilt some day--hopefully sooner than later) that we had in our yard in Hendersonville was full of buds the last time we were there, but the weather was so cool that the new flowers were very hesitant to break out from their protective covering. So when we came back to Charleston, we loaded it onto the back of the truck (COVERED back of the truck) and brought it with us. Once it hit the sun and warmth of Charleston, the flowers just jumped out and shouted for joy. The Angel's Trumpet is a night-scented flower, so we placed it by an entrance to the house. When you walk by it in the evening, the odor just envelopes you. I love it--although it COULD be called over-powering. . .

On a different note, I've been taking pictures of everything in our house. I saw a piece on the television that addressed the issue of insurance coverage in case of loss. They advised video-taping household contents (I don't have a video camera) or taking digital pictures. They also suggested taking photos of the contents of drawers, the point being that we don't remember EVERYTHING that we own and the pictures serve as an aid to remember and, at the same time, prove to the insurance company that we actually had what we say we had. I have 3 more rooms to do and then the cd's will go into the lock box in the bank. I'll have to admit that I didn't do any house cleaning before I took the pictures. Now there's firm, provable evidence that I'm a lousy housekeeper! Oh well. (And I don't think I'll be posting any of THOSE pictures.)

The Re-Do is Done

Did you ever make a quilt, live with it for a while and then decide that you just really needed to change it? Well, I did. The more I looked at my quilt, Magical Thinking, the areas in the blue background just got to me enough that I HAD to change it--which isn't the easiest thing to do once it's totally finished. I was asked by friends why I just didn't move on and make another one like it and change THAT one or, another friend asked, why didn't I just give it away? I don't know.

This is my original version--except that it doesn't show all of the bugle beads that were finally in the black "figures" situated in the blue background. And it was the beads and all of the machine appliqued and quilted black figures that I decided had to come out. That took about 6 weeks. When I finished that, I machine quilted in the areas that I had uncovered.

Once that was done, I designed the elongated two-colored stars in Electric Quilt, sewed them together and hand appliqued them on top of the quilted surface. And, finally, I hand quilted them through 2 layers of the quilt (I didn't want to come through to the machine quilting on the back) and sewed a gold & black bead in the center of each one. And NOW, I'm finished--and happy.

I know that some people would have a term for the effort I just went to for a smallish return, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.