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“I have given skill to all the skillful, so that they may make all that I have commanded you. “ Exodus 31:6


“O Thou who art the all pervading glory of the world, we bless Thee for the power of beauty to gladden our hearts.
We praise Thee that even the least of us may feel a thrill of the creative joy when we give form and substance to our thoughts and, beholding our handiwork, find it good and fair. “.
Walter Rauschenbusch


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"Come, and listen, all you who fear God; let me tell you what He has done for me.
I cried out to Him with my mouth; His praise was on my tongue.
If I had cherished sin in my heart, the LORD woud not have listened and heard my voice in prayer.
Praise be to God, Who has not rejected my prayer or withheld His love from me!" Psalm 66:16-20
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Monday, August 16, 2010

EDITED: I found a great GIVEAWAY and a wonderful idea for a quilt-along ........

.......and it starts with a giveaway of alot of the supplies you'll need to participate!

Here's the post you'll want to read.  It's such a wonderful twist on quilt-alongs, actually concentrating on the quilting rather than the piecing !  I'm really thinking of joining this one if the timing turns out to be right !

I personally feel the desire to do something other than meandering, ......well, atleast once in a while.  I have trouble trying anything else because I SO love that crinkly all-over scrumptious look that you get with meandering.

Anyway, I don't have time to post more right now, but wanted to give you all a chance at this, and give myself 3 chances......hee !

EDIT:  Okay, I'm back from my running around and happy to say that I've been hand-quilting again.  Jodie's quilt-top project still needs a little fabric found for it, to extend it to fit her queen-sized sleigh bed, .........

so I dug out THE MONSTER.  I must be desperate !
 
But I'm so glad that I did.
I finally settled on a simple quilting design for the swags, deciding that 21 years is ENOUGH for one project, and I'm moving on.  Gone are dreams of winning a major prize in a huge quilt show.........in fact, the day has passed, I think, when hand-quilting can even compete with today's machine-quilting........sad, but true.
But, I just no longer have the competitiveness for that anymore.  Right now, what tweaks my cheeks is seeing 3 borders worth of swags nearly completed, and only 1 1/2 to go.  That's 6 swags, I think !
I do see that I'll probably have to add something to the red border going around the entire quilt........It's only an inch wide, but seems to stand out as poofy and unquilted, even though I've quilted in the ditch on both sides of it.  I'll wait until everything else is all finished, and then lay the quilt out on a bed to make my decision..........it looks okay in that photo on my Flickr page,........maybe even a little welcome respite from all the heavily quilted areas.  If it does need quilting, I'll probably either wiggle back and forth down it, or do the rope-quilting that I've done on the two baby quilts.

Because it was so difficult to see any markings, I've marked my quilting lines on the muslin backing of the quilt, and am quilting it from the back side.  Turns out, it looks just fine, and I can't tell any difference.  That was a major concern in my mind, and I'm glad that it's settled.  I still hoop the quilt from the front side, just to make sure that the tension is the same as it has been on the rest of the quilting.

The solids in this quilt are poly/cotton fabric.........I mean, it's 22 years old, I guess, and I didn't know any better at the time.  They're even sortof see-through.   But I WAS smart enough, Praise the LORD, to put some of each fabric away to be used for the binding.  I have over a yard of the green, so that'll probably be my choice, since I need to cut a double bias binding.

3 comments:

  1. it looks fine, remember when i was so upset that my ballerina girls did not get a ribbon and an elderly women who i now am, said to me "honey, sometimes you can overquilt something and make it not look as good."
    so dont worry about those 1" borders once you put the binding on and you baste around the border before you put the binding on it will all lay flat.
    wait till i get done with the MONSTER quilt and i will send you a picture of how bad a scrap quilter i am of course the church is gonna love all those scraps but what a way to clean your fabric. NOW i have like 6 zip lock bags of cut off triangles of the mutted colors like thimbleberries, do you want them they would probably square to 2 1/2 squares.
    luv ya
    jodie

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  2. It looks great! The "limited" quilting in the swags is perfect :) It is a classic work of art in the traditional style that WILL be appreciated by all those machine quilters in the future too :) You are an awesome, skillful (and persistent) needleworker! I love it! Thanks for the update.

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  3. Dolly I can't believe you hand quilted all that! It looks gorgeous!! When we were at the beach, all the quilts on the beds were hand made and hand quilted, and I was in awe as I am now with your quilt!

    I did check out that link for the quilt-a-long, and it looks really cool, I definitly may check it out, I love finding new free motion ways to quilt, I love my new swirl pattern I was working on, but always am looking for something new!

    As for my quilt-a-long, I think it was over a few months ago, I just happened to stumble upon jaybirdquilts.com and found all the posts for the quilt-a-long, so I just used her posts and did it at my own pace.

    I am super excited to work on the baby quilt, those are definitly my favorite I found this adoreable blue/green/yellow whale print fabric that I ordered to use as the main print, and I cant wait until it gets here to start working on it!

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