After finishing up my first Quilt of Valor volunteer project I decided it was time to put on a fun for me quilt that I had absolutely no expectations for this go around. I chose my brown heart quilt I bought in a group off of eBay right after Christmas. I chose a tan colored thread to match the tan heart fabric. I quickly got it loaded on the machine and remember to put down a straight line of sewing so I would know where to line up my quilt. On the QOV I didn't remember to do this step and luckily I was only off 1/4" by the time I got to the end of the quilt with my stitching. Lucky!!!
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| The brown heart quilt locked & loaded. |
After my quilt was loaded I had to wait. I do not have a heart pattern for quilting. Dustan has figured out how to draw quilt patterns for my machine and upload them so I don't have to go and purchase them. I will give him a rough sketch and he takes it and makes it happen. Quit drooling, he's taken. He was having a few glitches pop up so he was having to smooth those out. Then I was ready to go. I didn't even get out any practice material and practice quilting it. I just started right on my loaded quilt! Oooooo! Talk about daring and reckless. There is something about when it's a design you've doodled many time during faculty meetings that makes it easier to just go for it. (Yes, I'm a heavy doodler. If I'm forced to sit for any length of time and expected to be quiet I get out scratch paper and doodle.)
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| Here's what a quilt design loaded on my Pantovision program looks like. |
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| Here's the pattern quilted. Not too shabby! |
We went to bed last night with a lot of snow on the ground and it was still coming down slowly. We woke up to a foot of snow this morning. That doesn't include the 3" we got several days before in a weekend snow. I went out and pulled the first shift of shoveling. Dustan took second shift and I left him all the drifts. We had a 3' drift in front of our garage. This was a snow storm for those with a pioneer heart.
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| Dustan and Happy out cleaning off the front walk. Yes, that pile is every bit as big as it looks in the photo. |
After shoveling I went back to work on my quilt. It went smoothly with no tension problems, batting shifting, or any of the other things that seemingly pop up. I took a break at lunch time and a siesta, because when will I get another snow day in the near future where the day is completely mine? I finished about 30 minutes before sunset. I follow several blogs and I've seen some awesome pictures of quilts taken on the snow. I thought this one might be a good candidate since it was such a dark color that would contrast well with the brilliant snow. What do you think?
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| My finished heart quilt out on the snow. |
