Grace Quilts

A s promised, in daylight hours . .pics of gran’s quilt

I really am pleased with how this turned out considering all the “oh craps” that happened during the final parts of her quilt. heh .. i vacuumed really good in the living room (well the whole house too), made the dog lay down her bed, checked for the location of the cats (they were in hiding still from the vacuum) and then ran for the quilt and my camera .. didn’t want to take the chance of a kamikaze cat / dog hair heading for the flannel on this quilt! I still have to get Gran’s postal addy ..I think I’ll suggest to Reg that he call her tonite and find out just WHERE she is .. if she’s at the cottage, it’s all good – maybe he can indirectly ask what she does with the cottage mail when she’s in town – does she have it forwarded??? I guess we’ll find out!

In this pic you can see some of the ’stretchies’ that affected the middle parts of the quilt from the quilting and tieing .. but I’m not going to worry about those at all .. because it’s flannel, I’m sure that this will eventually work itself out – if not, I did my darndest to make it as ‘right’ as I could. You might be able to see some of the ‘pouffing’ around the quilting lines (diagonal again GRRRR) in the corners, but on the back where I starched the snot out of it .. not a wrinkle, pouf, nothing!! So that’s the answer to THAT issue … starch starch starch!

This pic you can see that there are NO waves along the edges anymore at all! They’re gone .. they went out to sea .. they got gathered and tossed to the wind .. LMAO .. okay .. i’ll stop **znerk .. ahem ..

I am really pleased with the end result .. Will I use flannel again – sure! Only after I starch the snot out of it, wash it twice in HOT water, pin / baste it closer than normal, and try NOT to have the flannel dogs side down .. as you know, the dogs act as an ‘easer’ for fabrics – and that with flannel is like a taffy pull in July .. WEEEEEEEEEEEEE LOL ..

Actually this didn’t take all that long to do .. granted it’s lap sized / twin – but I didn’t work on it steadily at all .. hmm let’s see what the actual timeline is for this quilt;

1. Aug 14 – fabrics selected

Vacation up North – gone for 9 days

2. Aug 26 – nickels cut
3. Aug – Sept 10^th – blocks assembled by leader n ender method
4. Oct 11 – border cut out
5. Oct 14 – borders on
6. Oct 21 – binding on
7. Oct 22, 24, 25, 28 – Battle of the Flannel
8. Oct 29 – DONE

So all in all, this wasn’t to bad timewise, I’ve only really worked at it steadily for the past 2 weeks, there were other projects on the go with this one; 1800 quilt, kyle’s spinner blocks, colour mystery (still have to do the borders on that one). I’ve not complaints .. this time – hehehehehe

At any rate .. I’ll likely be taking all these tips n pics and making a flannel FAQ – might even do that today .. we’ll see .. I have to plot my cmas giftee list still and finish piecing Kyle’s spinner quilt.

Man does this feel good .. oh I just have to do a label .. going to do some water testing with printed fabric .. worse case, I have spray matte that works as a waterproofer, or I just write on the quilt in pigma pen .. either way . it’s all good

Have fun!

F inally I had a chance AND the energy to work on the waves in Gran’s quilt .. I was just soooo wiped out on Sunday – it was unreal and I couldn’t believe it … I think I was asleep by midnite.

I didn’t get a chance to work on it today or even get thru all my mail since my dad wanted my help today. My dad and mum were doing work on the house slowly but surely. Well since mum’s death, dad has been trying to get the house in one piece and to get it as close to how mum would have wanted it .. so for these excursions, he asks for my help .. granted do warn him that while mum and I thought alike in some cases, we were total bloody opposites in others – he goes that’s okay .. you actually come up with some good ideas now and again – gee thanx dad .. pfft LOL gotta love my dad .. so today we went and looked at interior doors – then i bought some tickets for the Pistons – Wizards game for next Sat – I’m not telling Kyle, he’ll find out when we pull into the Palace parking lol LOL .. we are dragging him to the outlet malls for Cmas plotting and clothes sizing (I get a Joann’s trip out of it of course)

So i buy these online with dad’s credit card and picked Cdn will call thinking that I can get them here .. yeah right (I won’t bore you with the details .. I’ll just get aggravated again – Customer service my great aunt sally’s big toe!) .. needless to say, 3 hours later, it finally got straightened out, but I’m sitll waiting for the email to print them … If I don’t have it by the time I get up, I’ll be calling them again ..

When things calm down I grab Gran’s quilt and rip apart the rest of the binding where I need to get to the inner seam – I did the first seam with my machine with the zigzagging over a thread trick .. that didn’t work as well as I would have liked .. maybe because I did the whole side and it was a larger area than you would normally do for gathers?? For the other 3 sides I just picked where I needed to. I used some hand quilting thread and used a larger knot so it wouldn’t pull thru easily. Hand quilting thread because it’s thicker, isn’t slick in finish so it ’sticks’ to the fabric, and I knew I could get some sizable knots with minimal effort. I’ve actually got 3 sides totally fixed and the binding back down. That leaves just the one long side to redo the binding on .. that’s the one that didn’t work so well, I might just do some spot basting / gathering to see how that works. Pucker fixes are next, then in the wash she goes, then hopefully in a shipping bag and off to her new home (!) That would be so cool if I can do it before Friday ..

I knew that the gathering wouldn’t get rid of the waves entirely, but tame it down to ripples .. and that’s exactly what happened .. doncha just LOVE when something actually works (!) Fancy that novel idea!! There’s a few that are still ‘waves’, but not tsunami, and I can honestly live with these as they are .. it’s 90% improvement easily!

I’ve emailed Aunt Barb to find out exactly where Gran is right now – town or the cottage – so I’m hoping to be able to ship that off this week.

I so wanted to be able to play with the paints and stuff I got last weekend, but that didn’t happen . I do want to get the rest of the blocks done for kyle’s quilt too .. oh I picked up some shaving cream, so marbling is in the near future along with discharging, dyeing and painting ..

oh what FUN!!

I’m off – it’s 2:15 and I’m tired .. time for my read before sleep (almost done with Stalker and then I can start my new books) and then back at it again tomorrow .. I’m really hoping to actually be able to read my email tomorrow .. I was only able to get a bit of list email done and personal .. (**sigh) I love my dad .. I really do – hehehehehe