Fun with Friends!

What a great week.  Thursday my cousin and I visited her friend who has a long arm quilting machine!! I had never seen one in use before and I was fascinated.  Here is my cousin pinning the back of my quilt to one of the bars.

Here is my black and white quilt being quilted on the machine. 

This is my black and white quilt with shots of color.  I have not put the binding on yet but I hope to do that this weekend. I am very excited about this quilt and how it turned out. 

Here is the back.  My $1/yard Elvis fabric!!

















A close up of the quilting,  Betty did a great job.

For the Royal Wedding my friends and I got together,  wore our hats and watched.  Darlene took the top off of her Easter tree and put it on her hat. 

Our hostess did a great job of making us feel very English.  Her table was beautiful. Of course we had to have ham biscuits. 

 Here are all of us in our hats! What a hoot,  we had a great time.

New Things

We have been at the beach for the last few days.  I finished my black/white quilt top.  I don't have my camera with me so I will post the pictures of that later.  I finished the sawtooth border and it looks great.  My aunt saw it and said the pictures don't do it justice.  She had not seen it in person before.  I always feel a letdown after working and thinking so hard about a quilt.  I worked on those black and white blocks during the winter of 2010.  It is a good feeling to finish but still you have so much thought invested.

Our new quilt group, Non-traditional quilters,  met last Monday at my dear friend Lori's quilt shop,  Cottonfields.  She has a great blog too.  There were only 4 of us,  hopefully there will be more this week.  She showed me curved piecing!  I know should have done it before but I am scared of curves!!  Since I was trying to motivate myself this morning I decided to try it.  Wow!!  It isn't hard at all. 
This is some of the fabrics from my black and white quilt and "shots" of color.  Now I have to decide what to do with it.  I think I will piece the back of the black and white quilt and use it there. I have some great Elvis fabric for the back.  I do love pieced backs.

I have some great starfish fabric that I have had for years.   I was playing with it yesterday afternoon and made these blocks.  Maybe I will make a few more.  It would make a charming quilt.  I thought about black and white log cabins  but I am honestly ready for some color. 

Did you see Tonya's post on Unruly Quilting?  She is trying to do without her rulers!!  I am not sure I am ready to be that liberated!!  I am sure my grandmother never used a ruler or a rotary cutter and she made great quilts.  Tonya also has some links to other blogs with very interesting stuff.  Daintytime is very interesting.  I really like her ideas about Mod Mood Quilts.   I think the first one I posted is sort of a Mod Mood quilt. 

Thanks

I so appreciate all the comments about my black and white liberated quilt.  I have been very busy this week.  My son and his wife went on a cruise so we have the grandsons.  I have been able to sew a little bit but not much.  This weekend I am going to devote myself to making more liberated sawtooth and see what happens from there.  I got some more of the black from my local quilt shop,  Cottonfields.

I ordered this cool book.  I found it on some other blog and honestly I can't remember what blog.  It is a great book with tons of ideas for modern quilting.

 

I like making log cabin blocks and it seems like I am in sort of a black and white period.

I made this little star the other day.  My aunt is really into 9 patches and stars are a great combination for 9 patches.

Liberated Confusion

One finish this week. For a friend of mine whose daughter is expecting her first child.


























Last Friday a friend of my cousin called and said Hancock had a dollar table. WOOHOO!! Elvis fabric for a dollar a yard. Notice I didn't tell anyone until I had gotten all I wanted!













I have discovered this last week that being liberated at times is confusing and definitely not easy. I put together this black and white quilt top last winter but never finished. I was imagining a sort of piano key border. My cousin's friend has a long arm machine and offered to do a quilt for me. I started thinking, how about spiky sawtooth. What do you think?


















I thought spiky sawtooth at the bottom and top and then make a border of stripes. I cut some strips and put them together. This DID NOT speak to me at all.

















At this point I am very frustrated and feel like I have wasted time putting together a border that I am not going to use. I decided to go to the master of liberated quilting (Gwen Marston). I had been using her Liberated Quilting 2 as a guide for the spiky sawtooth. I randomly turned to a page and saw this sampler!

















Talk about a AHA moment! This is it. I will make more spiky sawtooth and put a star at the corners. This is just a random block at the corner. Really another idea I tried.
What do you think?


















I love liberated quilting but honestly following a pattern and knowing what you are going to do is easier at times. I also feel like I wasted a couple of afternoons of precious sewing time looking at options that didn't work. I also don't have quite enough of the black and white print so