Yes, people even The Slow Quilter is having her share of woes. I love making quilts, but I do not like to quilt them, only if they are small. Working on this signature quilt as given me woes. Finally using the fabric I brought at the show for the boarder, I was ready to start quilting it. How do I count the woes:
1. Sandwiching the quilt – since I cannot get on the floor to sandwich the quilt, I have to use the dinning room table, which is not long or wide enough for the quilt, so I have to carefully lay it out, tape it down on one side while the other side hangs off the table, then spray baste it and work on the other side. Not so bad, I have had practice in doing this with no wrinkles on the back.
2. Quilt it – since I am not a great quilter the easiest thing for me to do is stich-n-the-ditch. A lot of ditch stitching, no problem there either, lot of practice and very good at it. Since I have this 4 inch board on the quilt, I could not let it just flop around so I decided to just stitch straight lines on the boarder.
3. Since my sewing room is too small for anything this big to quilt, had to move the sewing machine to the dinning room table.
I thought I was doing a great job on this, but when I thought it was time to quite for the night, I discovered that I had sewed part of the batting to the back of the quilt. DARN IT. Had to rip out the stitches and just but the darn thing away until I come home from work to work on it again.
4. My last woe will be squaring up the quilt, not a problem, or will it be. I hope not. The easiest part of all this is when I sew on the binding, which I love to do and just sit back and finish it by hand sewing the binding. I hope to be finish this quilt by the weekend and give it to the ladies at the church on Sunday.
This will be my first finish for 2014 on a 2012 unfinished project. YAH!!!! Then I will pull out another unfinished long a go quilt to finish and the WOES will start again.
What are your Woes?
The Slow Quilter (Felicia)
Oh it is too bad you don't enjoy it....have you tried hand quilting? No getting on that floor!
ReplyDeleteI have a portable banquet table I use for basting quilts and to set up my machine for quilting on to support the quilt/weight. I have a small throat too, but can do FMQ on anything up to a twin size. BUT my pet peeve - for the price of them, sure wish rotary blades would last longer.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest woe is trying to figure out how to sew while keeping my 17 month old toddler out of my sewing things, poking her fingers on my machine buttons and changing settings, turning machine power off at the surge protector, etc. you get the idea. I also think I do a good job quilting until I learn something new I "should" be doing. Sigh. Sometimes the shoulda take the fun out of sewing.
ReplyDeleteMy woe is definitely basting, I hate that step. It's probably a no-no but I use fusible batting when I can, if the quilt is a throw size on down I can usually handle it okay on the ironing board.
ReplyDeleteGood for you finishing an old UFO. Now I need to do the same thing.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest woe is how to quilt the top once it's done. I have a HandiQuilter so that helps but I just look at the quilt and my mind goes blank.
I agree with Liza. I love designing and making the top. This is the most exciting part. But trying to figure out how to quilt the top is definitely the least exciting part. Sometimes I just have to put the quilt away until another time until I can come up with a design that I like.
ReplyDeleteFelicia, reading your woes made me sad because they are my woes most of the time also. My biggest woe is quilting. I feel my quilting skills are very lacking and so I always dread this step. I have a pile of finished tops that have been sitting for years waiting on me to quilt them :(
ReplyDelete