Happy New Year, friends. It’s 2023 and time to evaluate all those WIPs. I’m working on a personal challenge and doing 100 days of freemotion quilting over on my Instagram. I’m a little over half way done and wasn’t sure what to work on next. But then I remembered…aaaaall those WIPs sitting in the closet. You see, I’m really good at making quilt tops – just not finishing them. As I’m making one top, I’m already thinking about what I will make next. The finishing is the hard part.
I went through my pile and decided that I wanted to finish my oldest project. That is this flower quilt that I made in the late 90s…the 1990s, not the 1890s. LOL.
When I began quilting, I bought a lot of books. One of my favorites is the At Home With Thimbleberries by Lynette Jensen. This book had all the traditional quilt patterns that I love. I think I made four of the quilts in this book.
The In Bloom quilt is approximately 90 x 102. I had to add one solid border because I never did add it when I made the quilt. I can’t wait to finish this quilt for my bed. You can kind of tell in this photo that there are two different colors used in the background. I’m pretty sure it’s muslin as that was my go to background when I started quilting. I don’t mind that it doesn’t match – it gives the quilt character.
I am not sending this quilt out to a longarmer to quilt, I am doing it myself. I’m quilting all of this on my Baby Lock Regent. The Regent is a sit-down longarm quilting machine. I have an extension table on one side, and a card table on the other side. This is absolutely necessary when working with larger quilts — so you don’t have a quilt avalanche. Nothing is more aggravating than when you are quilting a motif and all of the sudden your quilt falls off the edge of the table, causing your quilt to shift under the needle and screw up your design. So I recommend having a way to keep your quilt level. Here’s a shot of my set up.
How am I quilting it? The center of the flower is a giant spiral. I used my quilting foot as a guide to keep the width of the circles even as I stitched. I started the giant spiral in the middle, and echoed around and around. I made smaller basic spirals in the leaves and some feathers on the edges. The inside sashing strips that divide the blocks have a ribbon candy design and some straight stitching.
I’ll be sure to show you the finished project once I’m done. There are 42 blocks in the quilt, and my goal is to quilt 6 blocks a day. Not sure I’ll make that goal, but….fingers crossed!
I hope this inspires you to take stock of your WIPs and maybe get them completed in 2023
Happy quilting,
Mary
