Yesterday afternoon saw me putting about another two hours into 'The Brute' - still only seem to be about half way round but I keep chugging away in there and hopefully over the next few days I should be able to put the quilting part to bed (Good pun that eh?) The binding doesn't phase me - I just stitch it onto the front with the walking foot and then enjoy sitting down in front of the tv hand stitching it to the back merrily away - must be a natural hand stitcher - strange that I don't hand quilt really then - perhaps I should retry 'a la Tonya' without a frame because that's one of the reasons I couldn't get on with it before.
I have two other quilts to bind for the show at the start of August - one is the group raffle quilt - a small double bed sized with moon over the mountain blocks - will show you a pic once I've done the binding - the other is a cot quilt I slammed together also for a raffle prize - and of course I have my 'Tonya alphabet' one to do too - so that'll be a real Binding-fest once I get started on all that. All these need labels and sleeves so I'm on a tight schedule - but we will get there.
The photos are of my son Nick (he's the little red-headed guy) at a sports festival last weekend with 999 other kids from schools all around Somerset. The first day was general skills training to pick out the top 150 to put on forward for further coaching etc, the second day had them doing a sport they'd never tried in the morning - he had picked fencing and was lucky enough to get his first choice - and then in the afternoon they got to do a sport they liked - again he was lucky enough to get his first choice of cricket. Football would have been his real pick but it wasn't an option as so many kids do play it normally if they're into sport over here and a part of the festival was to give them the chance to try new things. He got a silver certificate which I think will mean he's not in the top 150 but he had a fabulous weekend at the wonderful facilities of a very exclusive private school near where his dad works - how the other half lives eh?
10 comments:
You love handwork, so you really should give handquilting another try. For really special quilts. On the other hand, you do excellent machine quilting and boy are you getting the brute done so much faster this way than you would by hand...
Anne that is such a great photo of Nick. How very English though. Fencing at school!
Good luck taming the brute.
I am going to handquilt mine, as you know. WIthout a frame. I couldn't stand it either!
Quilting frames have their place. I have one set up in our sunroom and just go and work on i twhen the spirit moves me. It usually takes a long time but I like that it's always there waiting even if I have only a few minutes. I find doing the labels the hardest part of finishing a quilt for some reason. I have several that only need the label and there they sit, waiting....
sounds like you'll have a bunch of hand sewing -- hope there's good TV that week :-)
You and I sound alike, but I think all hand stitchers love the hand work in applique, so we don't bind the binding either. I am ready to start sewing my binding down today. But hey I didn't mind sewing each cover strip by hand when I joined the quilt either.
In summer it's easier for me to put the whole quilt on a tv tray and sit it leaning against my tunny to keep all that quilt off my legs.
I really loved seeing the sunflower you made. I saw a girl one day demonstrate a whole bunch of flower designs on a longarm, but they can be done on the regular machine too. I added the sunflower to that list!! Thanks!
Oops, forgot to mention Nick...fencing is so cool looking! Glad he got to try it!
Oh, Nick looks so cute... I guess he might prefer "handsome" though. It sounds like it was a great opportunity for him!
As for the hand stitching... I have several movies that I almost always "watch" when I'm doing my binding and that sort of thing. I've seen them so many times I don't actually watch them... I can just listen and see it in my head while my real eyes are on the quilt.
I like binding too. It is like the dessert - something really fun and enjoyable to finish off a great thing.
I have been catching up on your posts, I've been out of town without access to a computer. Your hexagon quilt is amazing! It is just beautiful!
It looks like you have mastered the art of quilting really big quilts! Good job.
Lastly, you have beautiful kids. My little girl thinks it's brilliant that there are girl rugby players, and after I showed her your post with their picture, she even more impressed that they are so beautiful! She's also impressed with the Nick's
fencing ;-)!
Sorry to go on and on, I just felt like I needed to catch-up.
:-) Kim
Enjoyed your blog post. Don't envy you having to do those bindings, sleeves, and labels...to me that's the boring part of quilting...but it must be done! I belong to two guilds, at one they do not require sleeves nor labels for the shows, isn't that strange! But I always do it because the other guild does require it. I took Fencing in school, enjoyed it very much, I'm sure Nick did too.
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