february ufo work

Sunday I decided it was time to start on the UFO for the month. 

I gathered my supplies (and knew right where that quilting template was!)...

I dragged out an old lamp and screwed in the black light bulb I'd borrowed...

Anybody see the missing lines?  Guess that black light story is wrong.  Maybe if it was done sooner, but no good in my case.

I tried to line up the template with what had already been stitched, but ended up free-hand drawing it instead.  It won't be perfect, but that's okay.  This IS my first hand-quilted quilt - if not quite perfectly lined up cables are its biggest problem, I'll count myself lucky!

I didn't mark all of it because the Superbowl was starting and I wanted to watch the commercials.  I listened to the game, but stopped sewing to watch the commercials.

I had help while stitching, of course...two views of my lap...

Tucker on my lap

and Emma on my knees.

It wasn't so bad because I was stitching borders and the quilt didn't need to move so much.  But yesterday I worked a bit more on a block and everyone was cranky because I had to keep moving it to get around the curves.

This photo shows quite well what I've gotten done.  It's coming along!  I'm just eyeballing these because the blue pen I'm using now doesn't seem to want to come out.  Go figure...

Here's a bit bigger and better photo of the quilt, though it's not all of it.  (Definitely better than the UFO challenge photo I took back in December!)

It's 3x3 blocks and all of the quilting in the sashings was done when I pulled it out.  I'd quilted about half of the cables in the borders - as in half of each cable, not halfway around the quilt.  I finished one border while watching the Superbowl and you see the photo above of how far along the first block is.  I started in the center, knowing that would be the hardest and hoping that would help motivate me to work on the other blocks.

The green is the same throughout, as are the sashing and borders, but the yellows that make up the flowers are all different between flowers.

I'm not finding hand quilting as frustrating as I remember, but I think a big part is that my amount of patience for this type of work has gotten better.  Or maybe I'm just not trying to make it so perfect any more.  I'm still not a convert, though!

Time to go stir the chili - hubby's dinner request, but it smells pretty good.

Happy quilting,

Katie

PS I've figured out borders (different from the pattern posted) for the 30s quilt, so I hope to get time to put the blocks together and add borders soon!  When it's done you know I'll show photos.