Thursday, January 15, 2009

Done is good!!!

Yes, my Nines and Vines is done. Now I can relax a bit.

Great timing too, I have coffee with the Friday Girls tomorrow, so I get to take it there and show them first. Then on Tuesday night, it's our guild meeting, so I get to take it there and show what I've been doing.. And on Wednesday, I deliver it to Rose and she will show the St. Dunstan's quilters on Thursday afternoon. Then after that it will be marked before it goes on the frame for the hand stitching.

I haven't blogged in a few days because I've been pretty much working on only this. I dreaded doing the applique, and I avoided doing any applique on anything for years. So finally, I said, this has got to stop and I decided to offer to do this one, with the intent of facing my applique fears. In the end, the applique went very well. I did a practice swatch using various stitches and feet. I did find a combination that worked good for me. It's trial and error for everyone I guess. I definitely I put more worry into the applique than I needed to. I did use the method of applique where I sewed each applique piece, (Stars, star center, and leaf) to a piece of very lightweight stabilizer, then trimmed to a small seam allowance. I then snipped a hole in the back of the stabilizer and with the help of a knitting needle and a drinking straw, I turned each of those FIVE pointed stars, 3 pointed star centers and 2 pointed leaves inside out.. The results worked great for me. What do you think?
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Next, I start to knit a sweater for Aurora. She grew out of her last one already... it's only been 6 months... oh, well. She'll be one year on Feb 7th, and we're planning a family birthday party here to help her celebrate.
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Tomorrow, I'm going to blog about some special mail that each of my grandchildren got this week!

14 comments:

Mary Johnson said...

It's gorgeous Gail, that's a lot of work for the applique. I usually use fusible for the the little bit I do and then I like to use the blanket stitch by hand - you did a great job with this.

Vicki W said...

It's beautiful!

Donna's chitchat said...

Amazing... holy frig, I can't believe your going to give that away!!!!

Anonymous said...

Gail,
It is ABSOLUTELY gorgeous!
WOW!

Anonymous said...

Gail, It's beautiful!! You must be happy to have it finished. Rose will be thrilled! I like the method you used for the applique - it works really well when you don't want raw edges, and you are right- those ladies would NOT like raw edges!!!
Well done!!

cpm said...

WOW! Amazing! You are sooooooooo talented! Is it hard to give it away?

antique quilter said...

So fun to see a quilt made up from one of my quilts from McCall's Magazine.
thanks for sharing it
Kathie

merrily row said...

What a gorgeous and generous gift. I have had this pattern bookmarked for a while, so when I saw the name I had to look. You are an inspiration.

Anonymous said...

What a beautiful quilt! Done really is good, isn''t it.

Zonnah said...

Love it! It must have taken you awhile to do it.

Quilt Rat said...

Wow! Striking, absolutely beautiful quilt. Well Done!

Jocelyn said...

Wow what a beautiful quilt! Love the applique.

Bunny said...

just beautiful.

merrily row said...

Well, I have book marked it, and made it (with your note of using the reds, green, blues, yellows) from McCall's site. Do you have a close up picture of how you quilted it? or suggestions???

I wanted to be a bit more creative than the suggested diagonal lines through the cream blocks.