DOUBLE TIME

The Lake Gaston Piecemakers Quilt Guild is a very busy and prolific guild.  The members are always doing something interesting. Sometimes we teach each other a specific skill (mine is paper piecing).  Other times we start a project and pass it off to the next person, as happened with the Round Robin, above.  This delightfully serene quilt was finished by Myrt, who brought it to me to quilt.  It will go to the outpatient chemo unit at the local hospital.  The backing is the softest flannel!  Someone will surely welcome the warmth and comfort of this quilt as he or she sits in that recliner receiving his/her meds.

While my IQ was chugging away during each row of the pantograph on the Round Robin quilt, I was able to finish appliqueing the bottom panel for my Lucinda Brodie border.  Today I will assemble the rest of the quilt and put it on my quilting frame.

I don't think I will have any time to do another project while quilting Lucinda since it's all going to be custom, but in case I do, here are the fabrics for the next small endeavor.  These will go into a block, which will be joined by other blocks from other IQ support group members, and will become a very special quilt for one of our team, who is dealing with breast cancer surgery, chemo, and radiation. 

MULTITASKING

By now you know, if you have been following this blog, that I am working on a major opus called Lucinda Brodie. This quilt requires an inordinate amount of time to do because it has applique in it. I don't particularly like applique, so I elected to do it with the sewing machine, using a tiny blanket stitch. I don't like doing it that way, either, but at least it's faster.

This is a time consuming effort, and I hate to waste time on just one thing.  For instance, I, like most of you out there, can be washing clothes, cleaning the house, cooking chili on the stove, and listening to music all at the same time.  At the end of the day, I would feel like I've accomplished something.

I had these charity quilts to do for some of our guild members, and I didn't want to sit in my studio and work JUST on Lucinda Brodie, so I cranked up the iPod in its player, loaded Vanessa's Disappearing Nine Patch onto the quilt frame downstairs in my lurkim and selected a cute pantograph to go with the Halloween themed fabrics Vanessa had chosen.

While the IntelliQuilter was stitching out a row, I was appliqueing.  And at the end of 7 rows, here was the result.

In this view you can see the bats and witches hats in the design.

And in this one,you can see the bats again and pumpkins.  Cute, huh?

While I was downstairs in my lurkim, I had a pot of spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove.  I love the aroma of homemade spaghetti sauce.  There's something energizing about it to me.  The day would have been perfect if I could have figured out how to fold clothes at the same time as sewing and quilting and cooking and listening to music, but I had to settle for just doing four things at once. 

I don't think I'll show you my applique just yet.  It took another quilt on the frame with another pantograph for me to finish it.  I'll show you that one tomorrow.