I am feeling like a kid on a long journey asking "are we there yet?" I say that because of the long protracted journey of the auction quilt. It's quilted but not without another challenge. This one was my doing though. I have a longarm and I'm always looking to improve what I do. Since the quilt has an autumn theme I thought what better than leaves quilted across the surface? No matter I hadn't done any, not even on my domestic sewing machine. I did pull out my dry erase board and practiced. Practiced enough that I thought "I can do this!" Well, I did do it...sort of. I spent about 10 minutes sewing and stopped and looked and didn't like what I saw. The thread was great...it blended...blended so well that I had trouble keeping track of where I was going and let me just say, it was not pretty. Now, if this was a quilt I was keeping I'd have no trouble going on. But....It was going to be looked at and my name would be on it and I do have some vanity after all. Soooo.....I spent the next 3-4 hours hunched over the longarm with my seam ripper. I even spent time underneath the machine looking up to make sure all the little threads were gone. Don't ask why I didn't take it off the machine because I really can't answer that!
After a dinner break I went back to work and quilted it with an overall meander. I know there is applique but at this point I wasn't going to take more time and try and do anything special with it. The applique proved to be a pain in itself because of the unsewing I did when I started with the blanket stitch. I've never had a problem with fusible but of course this time I did. Some of the leaves weren't adhering and since this was going to be someone else's quilt I took all the blanket stitching out (fortunately I hadn't gone too far) and laid it all down with satin stitching. Looking at it I see it's not perfect, but this was made with love and has that handmade quality to it. At least that's what I'm telling myself!
So....am I there yet? No, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel and this time it's not the lights of a train coming at me. I have the binding attached and will spend the next couple of days sewing it down and then there is the label. Let's hope I don't have issues with that!
