Progress! And a little tip.

 Baby quilt 1 ("Palate Cleanser") is coming along.

The baby quilt has only the top and bottom borders left to be quilted and then the binding. I quilted it on The Beaut with an edge-to-edge design from Designs by Juju (NAYY). It has not been without struggles, but for the most part it has gone well and I am pleased. I'm figuring out what I'll do on the top and bottom borders and hope to finish it next weekend.

So here's a tip that has helped me: Franken-batting. If you haven’t heard this phrase then you haven’t had to learn the joy of piecing together odd shapes of batting to cobble together one big enough for your project when the quilt shops aren't open. I’ve been doing it for years and really like to use the fusible strips (I think they’re made of Pellon Fusi-knit interfacing) but I didn’t want to use them for the baby quilt. A few months ago I Franken-batted a piece for a baby quilt and liked how it went together. Most people I know will use a zigzag stitch, but I use stitch #4  on The Beast. I made adjustments to the upper tension, stitch width and length as you can see below (in yellow). 

I used my 20D foot and aligned the two pieces of batting with the center notch. The above photo shows the result (this was after it was stitched). It does a great job of bringing the two pieces together without any bulky seams. 

In a future post, I'll discuss my thoughts on quilting edge-to-edge on a domestic sewing machine.

While we were on vacation a couple of weeks ago, my sister came down from Memphis to help out a friend and stayed at our apartment. She came by to pick up her stuff on her way back home and told me that we needed to make a quilt for our friend Nancy. I told her I needed to make comfort quilts for  some additional friends. Stay tuned.

And in the "I've only played it out in my head" quilting ideas, while shopping for fabrics for additional baby quilts (most of my stash is made up of muddy reproduction fabrics and they will not cut it), I was inspired by a video I watched a few weeks ago about making a self-mitered receiving blanket. I'm thinking about employing the technique for a baby quilt using standard quilting cotton fabrics instead of flannel. We'll see where this goes, but I purchased fabrics for that purpose and they should arrive this week. I'm wanting to get all the baby things I want to make out of the way so I can tackle some of the planned items for this year. 

Also, another class today! From the same women that taught "It's All About the Face", a pet portrait class concludes today. I couldn't attend the first session due to work restraints, but I spent yesterday working on the project and will hopefully get where I need to be by the time class starts today. I have to get some tulle so I hope that will be a fast trip. They use a scrappy technique and I pulled way too many fabrics last week. Update soon.

We spent Memorial Day weekend in Fayetteville; two celebrations: Hubs' birthday and being able to hug our youngest and his wife for the first time in more than a year. Fabulous weekend. More in another post.

In the meantime, go make!