Flamingos Winging Their Way to Their New Home

Ta-da! The charity quilt for Quilty Hugs for Happy Chemo is on its way to find its new owner.

I am excited to donate this quilt and hope it will bring comfort to its owner.

I spent all of last week quilting and trying to quilt the quilt. I’ll admit it, right here and now, that I’m not the best quilter in the world, USA, California, Santa Rosa, ummmm, on my block. Let’s face it…I’m a lowly beginner.

I have three basic meanders: stars and loops, hearts and loops, and stars, hearts and loops! I decided that on this quilt, with so many choices, to do loops, hearts and stars. (Does it count as another type of meander if I list the items in a different order?) Hmmm…guess not, eh?

You might recall in the post where I unveiled the flamingos that I had a run-in with loops on the back of the quilt. I must admit that I behaved in an unseamly behavior as I handily dispensed with all the loops.

Fast forward to this past week…I had success in my meanders. Humbly I admit that some of the stars didn’t quite make all 5 points and some hearts looked deformed. I did the “Quilter’s Visual Test.” You know the one: if you can’t see any mistakes when riding by on a galloping horse…it’s good! Mine was good. And I didn’t even have to take off my glasses.

When it came time to do the borders, I looked for a good design. I consulted with my admired quilters: Leah Day and Lori Kennedy. I settled on a spiral pattern from Leah Day, which is listed in her “Super Beginner” group. I did lots and lots of practice before I gamely started on my quilt.

My borders are in black. The visibility of my meanders on the body of the quilt, I decided that quilting in black was the best gambit. It did mean, however, that the back side of the quilt would have black spirals against the cheddar. There wasn’t much of a choice…

At first when I looked, during quilting, at the black on cheddar, I wasn’t too impressed. But once done, I loved the affect of the squares that were made by the borders.

Again, wobbly and most spirals looked funny, but I found myself definitely enjoying the movement and rhythm of quilting them. There might be hope for me yet!

I discovered through the quilting of the borders, that my sewing machine has control issues. It’s sad but true. All had been going very well with my meander. I practiced the spirals on muslin sandwiches. Once I had the real quilt, it went a couple of vertical sashings then started looping in the back. I rethreaded the machine, practiced on sample sandwich and everything worked again. But then it started looping again. Sadly, this became a process. Each time after trying something new and getting a perfect back on the sample sandwich, all would go well and then it would eventually start looping again. I only had two horizontal rows to quilt, but just couldn’t get any cooperation from the machine.

Extreme frustration, anger and homicidal thoughts set in.

I stopped for the evening before I threw the sewing machines out the window. Then follow it out there with a chain saw.







Or start with a hatchet and turn it into something useful.




The next day I started with a different machine and finally got the quilt done. Breathe a sigh of relief.

I had decided to use a lavender binding that matched some of the flamingos on the fabric. I knew it would look good on the front, but wondered about it with the back. Silly me, I shouldn’t have worried. I absitively, posilutely love it!



And it is completely finished. It’s worth it because I want to give it to someone who will love it.

I’m hooking up with the following blogs. Hop on by to check out lots of lovely quilts! Their badges are in the right sidebar.
So Scrappy RSC Saturday
Patchwork Times
Show & Tell Tuesday
Fabric Story
Linky Tuesday
WIP Wednesday
We Did It Wednesday
WiP on Wednesday
Needle and Thread Thursday
Fabric Frenzy
Free Motion Mavericks
I Quilt
Fabric Frenzy
TGIFF
Finish It Up Friday
Sew Darn Crafty Linky Party

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