Summer Break Projects - Part 5, Some Quilty Finishes

A couple of weeks ago, after I finished the Scraptastic quilt, I suddenly remembered that I had a whole pile of quilt tops that needed to be quilted, so I started digging through the bin where I keep them. I gathered a giant pile of quilts that were ready for finishing. In addition, I found some blocks that needed to be turned into quilts.

I found 40 of these Raspberry Kisses blocks from a block swap I did in 2017. They are beautiful blocks. I didn't get any of the ones I made back, so none of these are mine. It was a simple matter to put these together and make a quilt.

I also found these 10 blocks from a bee my quilt guild did - probably about the same time. As queen bee, I requeste feathers with bright colors and low volume backgrounds. Since I never made my two blocks, and most of these are so different, this one is going to take a bit more thought and prep to put it together. It is still on my design wall. We will probably revisit this one another day.

I took a day and went up to my church where there is lots of floor space where I can lay the quilts out flat and sandwich them. Sandwiching is my least favorite part of the quilting process. As I get older, sandwiching gets harder. My knees just hate crawling around on the floor, and I don't like pinning or spray basting. However, it is a necessary part of the process and has to be done, so I just have to get on with it every once in awhile. Quilts like this little dancing pinwheels baby quilt are easy to sandwich. Larger ones are more difficult. I ended up sandwiching - or partially sandwiching - 11 quilts. that day. I ran out of backs (I was using sheets) so I didn't get completely finished. Some of them came home partially sandwiched, and I had to piece some scraps together to get enough to back the quilt. It was tricky, but ended up going suprisingly well.

I actually don't mind quilting them on my domestic machine. I have a Bernina 750 which has a large throat, and makes simple quilting jobs pretty easy. I quilted the double diamonds quilt with pebbles - or maybe we should call them stones, since the pebbles are quite a bit larger than what we usually think of when we say pebbles.

I also managed to get one of the green wonky/improv log cabins quilted. I did a simple meander design on this one and it went pretty fast. I can usually do a throw quilt in 3 to 4 hours.

Of the 11 quilts I backed that day, I have finished 3 so far, - the dancing pinwheels baby quilt, this double diamonds quilt,

and the green log cabin. Since I can't do the project I had planned for "just before I go back to school," I hope I'll get a couple of others completed too.