Quilting and Birding!

I am well into the quilting of the Blueberry Bagel quilt as it will be forever known.  I knew I was going to do a lot of quilting on this one and had envisioned early on how I would do it.  Of course I have done this before and then changed my mind.  I always test my idea out on a side of the quilt in case I change my mind and figure one area slightly different will be okay.  However, this was just right (for me).  I am doing feathers in all the pointy areas.

My only problem has been that the tension spring for the bobbin winder on my Juki is kaput so had to resort to one of those separate bobbin winders.  I had a lot of problems with loose thread on the bobbins which caused headaches when quilting but back on track now although this quilt will take some time to finish as it is large and this is a lot of quilting!!  I did finish all of the darker areas though today and started working on those light colored spots.

This and the next two are further areas of quilting -- this one and one other are along the side of the quilt  The edge is always a little tricky as you have to make sure it is taut.  I am impressed with my little phone camera which I have been using to take pictures in my sewing room these days.

This was near the corner.

I did finish the quilting on the Mystery Quilt and sewed the last of the binding on last night.  It looks pretty good if I do say so myself!!

In addition to all the machine quilting, I did take the time to head down to Ft. Fisher one day slightly after low tide and was amazed at the plethora of birds I found!  This was my best find and the first time I spotted it hiding next to the dock.  It is a Virginia Rail and they are very very elusive and don't like their picture taken.  It immediately went into hiding when it spotted me but I was very patient (there were other birds to photograph) and waited him out.  He wondered out and in from the pier and I was able to get quite a few pictures although the light was not ideal (very very bright day which makes for bright on one end and shadows that are dark on the other end of the bird).

Here is one of the times I managed to get a pic before he started running again.  He had caught a fish but a crow came swooping down and stole it.  All I have is a blur for the photograph, he was so fast.

Back to his hiding place once again.

I was watching this Snowy Egret when my eye caught the Rail on the other side.  There were quite a few Egrets hanging out that day.  Usually I see the Great Egrets (with the yellow beaks) so seeing a lot of Snowy Egrets was a little different.

There were a lot of Hooded Mergansers hanging out as well.  I didn't realize their size but they look small compared to the Gull!  They were diving for food

There were a lot of Forster's Terns diving for food as well.  This one decided to stop and rest a bit.

A majestic Great Blue Heron was hanging out as well!

A Little Quilting

After I left last spring, the art quilt group down here spent a meeting painting mugs at a local shop (which has now closed).  They challenged themselves to exchange those mugs and then make "mug rugs" for the mug they got.  They then wrapped them all and I passed around the mugs with their rugs to the new owners.  It was a really funn lunch and great mugs and rugs!!

I have been very busy finishing up the five quilts that Dianne helped me baste.  A couple of these quilt were short batting so first step was to sew strips of batting to edges where they were short.  Then the heavy duty work began.  I don't have a nice table down here like at home but jerry-rigged several tables around the sewing machine which help somewhat.  This is the "quilt from hell" which turned out to be pretty easy to free hand quilt!!  I just chose to free hand around each of the blue motifs and then do stitching within the hexagon.  I tried several different things in the beige areas but didn't like any of them so undid them and left them blank.  I am sewing on the purple binding now!

You can see the detail of the quilting here.  One corner of the quilt is a bit wobbly but we will declare that to be the lower left corner of the quilt!  No way am undoing it!  There was a lot of rippling in the top before quilting but that is all calmed down now.

 I am working on this stack and whack now.  It is going fairly well but best viewed from a trotting horse!  Haven't decided whether I am going to do some fussy quilting in the wider white area in the border and sashing.  

Have gotten quite a bit done.  I am doing the free motion stuff now which I much prefer especially when you have limited area as you don't have to do as much movement.  After I get this one done, I will only have one more to do.  I still have to get batting for the "mystery quilt" but did find some backing for it and then to get it basted.  I have pretty much decided what kind of quilting I am going to do as I  did a lot of staring at it when it was pinned on my design wall.  

My quilting process is to do the straight line quilting in the ditch to secure the three layers.  Then I go in with thread matching the motifs and free hand quilt within each of the motifs.  Unless you look really closely, you can't see the quilting as I may have three different colors of thread within a motif.!

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