Catch Up on Quilting Activities

During the rainy days we had last week, I got to finish machine quilting several of the quilts I had brought down for the beds.  This is the first of the quilts where I practiced a bit with  my new Juki.  There is a lot of free hand quilting in the striped fabric but you can't see any of it!  I also quilted in the ditch around everything.  I love the speed of this machine as well as the perfect attachment of binding.

This is the second of the quilts to be finished also sitting on the king sized bed.  I stitched in the ditch up and down and then on the diagonals and called it quits.  It could stand with a little more but nothing shows anyway and there is enough to hold it together!

This is one of the blocks in the first of the one block wonders to get done.  If you double click you can see I am doing quilting in the "motif".  I did this in each of the hexagonal blocks and it did take a bit of time -- first having to determine what I would quilt around and then what was the most efficient way to do it.  Another feature of my Juki that I love is the thread cutting -- no more spending hours cutting all the loose threads on the back of the quilt while I am sewing the binding down!  I am almost finished with sewing the binding down on this one.

Another of the motifs.

 If you look closely, you can see the spiral pattern I quilted in the border.  I did a really bad job of putting on the borders (too big) which is too bad as this is turning out to be a pretty quilt.  There is no way I would take it undone though!  This was el cheapo Cranston fabric from Walmart that I bought years ago.  It did make a nice quilt though!

This is the quilt I am now working on.  The hexagons are smaller in this quilt so I am "stitching in the ditch" around each one and then will just do one round of quilting on the inside of each block which should be relatively fast.  It will be nice and perky for the beach house.  This was again one of those hideous (what was I thinking) fabrics I bought many years ago on a flatfold table in a discount fabric shop no longer in existence!

This is a picture of the new toy with my set up.  I am using an old wooden sewing table with a FW card table behind it to hold some of the weight of the quilt.  I have a luggage rack on the left hand side for the same reason.  It isn't bothering my shoulder so mustn't be too high.

No day would be complete without some butterfly pictures.  This is some sort of skipper  or duskywingI would guess -- less than an inch across on a dandelion in our very long grass!

Another one of the small butterflies -- lots of these hanging out -- maybe a checkerspot?  Very bedraggled.

This is a sulphur and there are always a ton of these flying around.  I have seen some of the other common butterflies from my third floor site but none have remained long enough for good pictures.  This one is taken with a telephoto from my third floor porch and is in the next door neighbor's flowers!  So hopefully a little fuzziness is forgiven!