I've been quilting away at my April goal this week, which is to have my neutral quilt ready for showing at my trunk show in May.
Just a bit of time in the mornings with my coffee and I've seen a lot of progress...
This is my first try at big-stitch quilting. I'm using a few different shades of perle cotton. I'm really enjoying it and it's especially easy with my Thimblelady thimble and no hoop...
I picked up my usual thimble one morning by mistake and realised that it would much more difficult to quilt this in this manner without the proper thimble.
As of this morning I would say this little quilt is two-thirds quilted, not bad!
On to my baking adventure...
Last month I tried to get a sourdough starter started and after a week actually baked a loaf of bread. It was an absolute disaster!
I'm determined to have a success at this process. I found a site online where you can order a bit of dried "starter", you can see it HERE. My order took about two weeks to get here since it was coming from the States.
Here is a beautiful sourdough bread we bought at the market the other day from The Good Bread Company...
....so chewy and yummy!
.....and after two days of "feeding" here is my starter, bubbling away...
I know it looks kind of gross, but I think that means it's working!
On Saturday, I figured it's time to actually try making a loaf. It's actually a longer process than the times I would make bread on a regular basis years ago. This actually had to sit for 12 hours.
My loaf is now rising for a bit before cooking. I have to say, so far it looks like I'll need a bit more practice :(
I had hoped to have a bit more time at my sewing machine this week, but that was not to be.
I did manage to get the first block done for this month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge. This month's colour is orange with a bit of black. I am going along with the Column-along for this project and here is a picture so far...
The block for January is the blue one ( I obviously need to do a few more ). February is the pink and brown. March was the purple butterflies. This month's block is super easy so I expect one more sewing session will complete the needed blocks.
I have a cousin back in Canada for a bit from his island home of Mauritius. He held a gallery showing of his paintings last week and we attended. There was a good turn-out of people to admire his work and I can say I'm now the proud owner of this, titled "Humanity".
It's beautiful and I'm hoping I can come to a decision on where it will hang soon, but for now at least it's up. I was hoping to have one of Dan's paintings as I also have the first painting ever done by my grandfather. Danny was also happy to keep one of his paintings in the family.
Well, it's another busy day in store around here so I'd better sign off for now.
I am linking up with Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching and with SoScrappy for Scrap Happy Saturday.
Have a wonderful Spring day!!!
I'd like to say that today will be spent doing some "slow" stitching....not to be. It'll have to be a work day for me, but that's ok since it's such a fun quilt that needs finishing! I'll have to ask if I can share pictures for next time.
I was able to spend my morning coffee-time putting in a few stitches, of course. I finished this month's block for the HappyDay BOM.
I don't know that it shows well in the picture but it's really pretty in real life.
I have two goals this month. One is that before I pick up another bit of applique I want to finish quilting my Moonlight Through the Trees. Here is a reminder of this quilt....
It's not a big quilt and I have incentive to complete it...I'm doing a trunk show in May and think it would be nice to include this quilt. I am quilting it with perle cotton, which is new for me, and it should quilt up quickly....if I keep at it!
The other goal is regarding a BOM I'm doing at Quilt Junction. We meet once a month (yesterday) and get the next set of clues for a mystery quilt. The quilt is Quilter's Legacy by Border Creek Station
Somehow I've fallen quite behind. Yesterday was the sixth of eight installments....I came home and finished installment three. So I have a couple of weeks to get caught up....and I'm determined I will!
Hopefully everyone has a bit of time today to take it easy and do some peaceful stitching.
Have a visit with Kathy over at Kathy's Quilts to see what others are working on today!
After finishing the piecing of my "Moonlight" quilt lately, I just knew that I had to start the quilting right away. I've been itching to do some hand-quilting for a few weeks now.
I've decided to try big-stitch quilting on this with perle cotton and some lovely needles I bought on Saturday at Quilt Junction in Waterford. Lana suggested them and I have to say they are very nice to work with. They seem quite strong...which is nice since this quilt is quite thick in some areas.
I also love the chance to use my Thimblelady thimble.
This thimble is fairly new to me and takes a bit of getting used to but so worth it. It involves learning a whole new way to hold your hand while quilting....and you can quilt with it without using a hoop. It was a bit of an investment, but this will probably be my go-to thimble forever.
Maybe you can tell, I get fairly attached to my thimbles! However disorganized I may be, I can be sure to tell you where my four best thimbles are at any given time!
So here is a picture of the beginnings of the quilting of "Moonlight through the trees"...
I've started in the middle with some quilting along a marked line. After that, I decided to just go freehand, doing some gently waving lines of quilting.
It's very difficult for me to do these big honking stitches after over 35 years of trying to master perfect, tiny, evenly-spaced quilting stitches! I'm having a hard time keeping them even and, being so big they just look messy to me. Hopefully I'll get a bit better at big stitches and like them a bit more!
Actually, I think they will enhance this quilt perfectly in the end!
It's another dreary day....hard to push myself up to the longarm when all I'd like to do is some piecing and curl up with my book!
Yesterday I worked on a client's scrappy quilt....which always makes me happy. To me a quilt like this just screams "authentic".
Today I am linking up with Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday.
Have a great day!
