Another month, another quilt I want to finish.

I started this quilt last February and it's spent a lot of time folded up, waiting for the next step. I'm finally happy with the size, and I've got the batting and backing all tacked together, so the goal this month is to quilt and bind it. I'm going to try free motion quilting on it. My first attempt on an actual quilt. I've done some little practice pieces before, and this one right before starting on the quilt:

 You can click on these to see the quilting better..





Here's the whole quilt piled up around my elderly Pfaff, who I've taken to calling Fraulein Gerta since I got a newer Pfaff. Sadly, the new Pfaff, while a very nice machine so far, isn't the greatest with the free motion quilting. She has some tension issues.

Gerta free motions like a champ. She's a sweet running machine.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing....

and lo and behold, there's a quilt out on the bench with some of the blooming flowers! I finished my March Goal !

 I'm so happy with the way this quilt turned out. Compared to my last year's Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt, this one is masterfully made. (only compared to MY other quilt, not to anyone else's) The one thing I'm unhappy about with this quilt, is that I think some of that lovely rich blue from the back bled onto the quilt. If you look at the last picture, below, you can see some green triangles with what should be white dots, but they are a sort of greyish blue instead. Same with the basketweave pattern above the one on the left, it started out with white lines. Sigh.

I washed it with a color catcher and some vinegar. I may try again with another color catcher or 10.
Does anyone have any helpful words of wisdom about this?
I used to wash all my fabrics before using them in quilts, but I realized that some people did, and some didn't, most with good results. Unfortunately, this wasn't a good result, so I'm not sure if I should go through my stash and start washing all the unwashed, or maybe just wash dark fabrics? Maybe more research is needed.

Sunday quilting with help.

Linking up with my February finish/ March goal

Got my little sewing tote done around the middle of the month, in time for the DC Modern Quilt Guild meeting. It isn't pretty around the top binding, but it works, it's functional. And kinda cute. I'll keep it.
My March goal for finishing is my Bonnie Hunter Easy Street quilt. I'm in the midst of quilting it on my machine, so I've got a ways to go to finish the quilting, then trim it up and bind it. It's coming along nicely and I think it's doable to have it done by the end of March.

Here it is in progress. (it's nickname is clown car because it's so bright and busy)

what, two posts in two days? Unheard of!

So, this little cutie is my February finish I'm going for. I need to sew down the trim on the four sides, add a handle and binding to the top. It's not huge, but it'd be nice to get it done, rather than sitting around here forever unfinished. (and yes, I've already got stuff in it.) I'm excited to get it done, it's my first and second time sewing on zippers. Whoohoo!

right down to the wire!

I finished my Madrona Rd. Challenge quilt last night at 11:45 ish. Tonight I took a couple sort of low-light photos, but it's done. I can enter in the contest and into the lovely year of finishes for January. Whew. I struggled so with this quilt. I wanted simple stitch in the ditch horizontal quilting. My first try ended up with a nice long line of ripples in the direction of the ditch-stitching. Sigh. I plucked out a bunch of stitching. (like for a good part of Saturday) Sunday I was too depressed to do anything with the quilt. I started again early in the week, with pretty much the same results. At a certain point, I decided, too bad, I'm just going to finish this and move on. I'd love any suggestions on ways to avoid getting all those puckers. I think the linen might be the culprit, it seems a bit more stretchy than regular quilting cotton. Anyway, it's done. Finished the binding last night. It's not horrible, but to be honest, it looked a lot better before I quilted it. And I don't even feel like I've learned anything. I'll be dragging this to my next quilt guild meeting to seek guidance.
So, with all that, here it is:

I joined another Flickr group

But no, this one isn't going to add to the projects I have lying around, it's going to reduce them!
We pick a project, one a month, and make it that month's goal to finish that project.
Well, I have a lot of projects hanging around, but I had to make this month's a brand new project. Our modern quilt guild is doing a challenge using Madrona Road fabrics and solids. We have until the end of the month to submit a project to the fabric company and until our meeting mid-February to share our project with the group. So, I started this yesterday afternoon. It took me quite a while of thinking about this because the colors didn't sing out to me at first, but I'm quite happy with where it's going. I'm thinking a smallish sofa quilt or largish wall quilt, however it turns out. I have much more I want to do with this, but I ran out of linen, and have no place to get it locally, so I'll be ordering it from somewhere if I can figure out what color it is. Argh.

Some of this is just stuck to the wall, not sewn together yet if you're wondering why it's unusually wonky, even for me.