There are Quilting Goddesses, you know ...

If you know me, you know I love a good story ... 

After this last quilting project, I have come to the conclusion that there are Quilting Goddesses ... more than one, I believe.  And we must pay homage to them at various times.

I have been extremely lucky that the Quilting Goddesses have been friendly to me but recently I was humbled ... and hence the homage to be made to those Quilting Goddesses.

Let's define the Goddesses ... first, there's the Goddess of Wavy Borders.  She absolutely HATES being the friendliest Goddess around.  She will wave and wave till her arm hurts and then she will demand retribution.  She demands that all borders be measured 3 times for accuracy.  Oh, let's just whip those babies on in a flash, you think.  Just throw them down and stitch them up.  Nah, not gonna work.  

Then there's the Goddess of Wonky Middles ... you know what I'm talking about.  You lay that quilt top on the floor and no matter which end you tug and pull, the middle will never lay flat.  Goddess of Wonky Middles demands that you square up each square as you are sewing.  Oh, we all know that a little stretch here and there isn't going to hurt anything.  And that 1/4" seam that everyone seems obsessed about?  Heck, what's a little more or less among friends?  Ha!  The jokes on you and Goddess of Wonky Middles is going to be laughing her wonky self at you!  

And then there's my favorite ...  the Goddess of Actual Quilting.  She a real joker, loves to play tricks on you.  She's the one who stands there next to you as you're quilting and all of a sudden you realize you don't have enough backing left on the roller.  Oh, she just laughs and laughs as you check your measurements (you did write down all those measurements, didn't you?) and then realize that your measurements were correct but you loaded the backing the wrong way ... aaarrrggghhh!!!  Or you come to the end of the batting .... or you are stitching and then discover that you put the wrong color of bobbin in on the last change ... or you are stitching a panto and before you finish the first row it dawns on you that you're using the WRONG PANTO.  Yeah, there she goes, laughing her wicked laugh again ... 

The Goddess of Actual Quilting is really a hard Goddess to appease because she covers so much area!  You just have to be vigilant, calm, and even clever to keep her happy.  

And then we have the Goddess of Frogging and you know what I mean. Three minutes of badly executed machine quilting will result in about an hour of ripping out those horrid horrid stitches.  My back aches just thinking about it.  

You don't need to ask how I came up with ALL those examples ... just know that when things are going extremely well you might want to pause a moment to be sure you're on the right track.  I'm not just whistlin' Dixie here.  

And having said all that, I'm posting pictures of my last quilting job.  There's a BEFORE picture and an AFTER picture.  When I realized just how wonky this beautiful quilt top was, I almost froze.  I called sweet Sue and we talked about it and she said "Just do what you need to do".  I don't think she knew that I had no idea what I needed to do!!  But I used a lot of pins - it's technically called "Pinning the Snot Out of It" - pinning down the area I wasn't quilting on at the moment, then removing pins as I worked across the top.   I then steamed and starch the areas that were bubbling up in front of me ... boy, that worked wonders!!  Anyway,  I worked with each of those blasted Goddesses and looked how beautiful it turned out!  

Before you forget, go to the sidebar and click on the video YOU CAN QUILT IT OUT ,.. that song now has special meaning for me!  

Enjoy!!  And yes, my quilting friends ... YOU CAN QUILT IT OUT!  Love that video!

So dear sweet Sue - your colors and fabrics are fabulous and with a little bit of love and offerings to the Quilting Goddesses you have a most wonderful quilt!

NEW YORK NEW YORK

Got this one finished recently and it will be winging its way to New York and owner Judith this afternoon.  I wonder if I'll ever be able to hand-deliver one of these NY quilts??  Love Love Love NY!

When I first saw the top, my immediate reaction was "Oh, let's play!"  This is the perfect quilt to do some custom on and Judith agreed.  

I used a traditional-type thread (SoFine) on this one, both top and bottom.

 I wish I were an accomplished photographer ... but THAT'S not happening.   So just enjoy the beauty of the colors of the quilt and look at how well put together it is.  Good job, Judith!





























This is a close-up, sorta, of the medallion.  Those big corners were just jumping up and down, yelling "Feathers!  Feathers!  We want Feathers!"  Can't deny a corner, can you?








A real-close-up of one of the corners.  I broke up that big corner triangle into 3 sections and went from there.  Small green border got a back-and-forth leaf treatment, and the yellow/gold medallion border with the green cornerstones got a rambling feather treatment.  





















The backing looks cool from this angle, doesn't it?

  

Civil War Reproduction Quilt

This is  Anne's quilt that has kept me busy for a couple of days now.  She spent quite a bit of time piecing this and wanted custom work.  I looked at it and thought, "Oh, my ... this really does scream Custom, doesn't it?"  I had so much fun with this one.  And again, I used my design tool to help lay out the different designs/motifs.  Just a very gratifying quilt all the way around.

It's a dreary rainy day in Georgia so pictures taken inside the house.  Ok, we have sailboats on the desk and Mojito mix on the wine chiller ... hubby on boat and me with a Mojito!  Life is Grand!

I used two layers of batting ... Quilters Dream Blend 70/30 on the bottom and Quilters Dream Wool on top ... and that wool batting just helps the quilting pop, doesn't it?