Machine Quilting Binge

It's that time of year again. . .time for the machine quilting binge! I always have several quilt projects in the works, and once I finish a quilt top, I'll piece a backing, baste it, fold it up, and tuck it away under my sewing table (or sometimes, I'll just put the top away and figure out a backing and baste it later). Once or twice a year, I pull out all the projects that are ready for quilting and binge. Usually one or two projects get put off until next time because I haven't figured out how I want to quilt them yet.

There is a reason for the save and binge. I free-motion quilt, which is a skill that has a kind of zen. You control the speed of the machine, the rate that you move the quilt, and the pattern you are sewing. It takes practice, and I quilt better if I do a lot at once. I usually use a small wallhanging or neonatal charity quilt to warm up on. I find that it is stressful at first and all the muscles in my shoulders tighten up, and then as I keep doing it, I start to relax and the quilting gets better. I find the zen of machine quilting.


Here are my warm-up projects.


And this is me, working on a lap-sized quilt, the first in the stack. It took me a couple of hours to find the zen this time, but I got more than half of this one quilted today. I have two more basted quilts in the stack, plus two more basted wallhangings. I also have two tops with already pieced backs ready for basting (I ran out of batting and safety pins for basting), and two or three lap-sized tops without backings. I usually piece my backings from fabric in my stash. I have a lot of fabric, but I tend to buy 1/2 or 1 yard cuts, so I rarely have enough for a quilt back. Pieced backs are more interesting anyway. Sometimes the back of the quilt is almost as interesting as the front. I'll post some quilt backs on here later as I complete the quilting on this stack of quilts.

My Green Quilt

Here is the completed chevron quilt top. A number of changes have occurred since the last iteration. I added thin gray bands to emphasize the diagonals in the quilt as well as borders. I'm still not sure if the coral pink inner border is the way to go. I already made it narrower (it was originally to be 3/4", now it is 1/2"). I suppose I can always applique another border on top if I decide it really has to go. I am piecing leftover strips to make a backing for the quilt, and, of course, planning my next quilt.

Two Very Different Books

My reading tastes are fairly omnivorous, so here are the two I finished most recently (Jane Austen's "Persuasion" doesn't count, since I reread it).



John Scalzi's "The Last Colony" was quite enjoyable. It is third in a loosely connected series set in the same universe. Humanity has colonized the stars and now competes with other races for planetary territory by recruiting the elderly to serve as soldiers and giving them new, genetically enhanced bodies to fight with. An alliance of alien races called the Conclave has formed and declared that no nonmember species (including humans) will be allowed to colonize new worlds. John Perry (retired soldier) and his wife, Jane (retired Special Forces soldier) are enlisted to start a new colony in defiance of the bann. These books are like popcorn, but they also bring up some interesting ideas about leadership and governments. One of my favorite authors, Lois Bujold, says that Sci Fi/Fantasy books are really about politics and power, and there's plenty of that here.



Shay Saloman's "Little House on a Small Planet" was also interesting, although I wish it had more pictures. It's a book of anecdotes and interviews about and with people who live in small houses. It's an advocacy book about ignoring the call of the McMansion and living small; I found it less annoying than some (does that mean that it is really less annoying or just that I find it so because I agree with a lot of the ideals in it?). It made me think about life in general, what we value and how we order our lives. I live in what is, by American standards, a modest-sized house--about 1200 square feet--but nowhere near the 120 or 350 square feet size of some of the truly tiny houses profiled in the book. I know I could live in a smaller space--I have before--but it seems hard for me to make the change now. I guess it is because I like my neighborhood and don't really want to move. Maybe my inertia is just too great for the kinds of changes needed to downsize my house. The only way I could think of doing so was to build a guesthouse in the backyard and live in that. And I'd have to fight my husband over that, because he really wants a garage instead, so he has somewhere to work on cars!

Another book

The latest book I finished was Palimpsest, by Catherynne Valente. It is the story of four people who are transported to a dream-city after an impulsive one night stand with a mysterious stranger, and how they each become obsessed with the city and finding their way back to it--permanently. My reaction was mixed. Valente's language is beautiful, and her writing has that half-intriguing, half grotesque quality of fairy tales. She is never a quick read. Her characters are only symbols and the plot never seemed to quite mesh. It was a bit more explicit and graphic than I expected, and the story was too disjointed to read smoothly or draw me in completely. It seemed to both go too far, and not far enough--too far to make the reader comfortable, but not far enough for clear resolution and closure in each of the tales. I wasn't sure I'd finish it and probably won't read it again. I liked her Orphan's Tales books (In the Night Garden and In the Cities of Coin and Spice) better. The stories were also disjointed, but it suited the structure of the books better.

Chevron Top Done, Auditioning Borders

I finished the Chevron quilt top, and am auditioning borders for it. I was originally planning a white inner border and light green outer border and medium/dark green binding, but I thought I'd try some pinks and purples for the inner border as an experiment. I think the pinks give it a little zip. There is a tiny bit of coral pink in the body of the quilt--thin stripes scattered in one of the fabrics--so I think I'm going to go with that one (shown in the second photo). I want the inner border to be fairly narrow. A little pink goes a long way.

Kindle Covers

For Christmas last year my husband got me a Kindle (which was even better than a pony!); he also got me a nice leather cover for it, but of course, I had to make a couple of fabric covers as well (just so it doesn't feel like I'm reading the same book all the time, right?). I traced around the leather cover to make the pattern, and they slip on over it.

Good book

Just finished reading The Stolen Child, by Keith Donohue. Someone in my book club loaned it to me. The story of a child kidnapped by faeries and the changeling left in his place. It's a strangely compelling book about identity and change, love and loss, remembering and forgetting. Fascinating.