Crackpot Quilters’ Blog

I recently tried doing some machine quilting on my new sewing machine for the first time. I had bought a walking foot for it when I bought the machine, so it just took a little time to attach that, and I was ready to go. So far, I’m very happy with the results! It feels similar to machine quilting on Marty’s machine, and the ‘stop with needle down’ function is very handy. (Unfortunately, my new sewing machine did not come with Grandparent Babysitters who will play with the boys and allow for long periods of uninterrupted quilting – bummer!) I’ve just been quilting in the ditch on a Project Which Cannot Be Revealed to Some Crackpots at this Time so far. I haven’t tried any free motion quilting. My machine does allow you to lower the feed dogs but it doesn’t come with the presser foot for free motion quilting, and I didn’t buy one, so that will wait for some other day when I’m feeling ambitious.

I finished both of the quilts for friends who had baby boys this summer. I’ve already given the star quilt to its recipient. I’m hoping to get a better picture of the Sailboat Quilt to send in to Quiltmaker!

Now that school is out here, it’s officially summer for us, and that got me thinking about our All-Together Week Crackpot Quilt Event. I can’t seem to remember – was the quilt from last summer completed, or is there still work to do on it? Either way, I was thinking that we might want to make it easier on ourselves this year and just make rows of blocks or a top for Project Linus. They don’t publish the new pattern until the fall, I think, but they always accept quilt tops of any pattern and the block is always a 6″ paper pieced pattern, so we could send them blocks from a previous year and I’m sure they’d use them. What do other Crackpots think?

Lately I’ve been working on a Project Which Cannot Be Discussed with Some Crackpots. It involves scraps, so I’ve been searching through my (quite large!) collection of scraps to find what I want for this Project. I had already sorted my scraps by color and put each color in its own ziploc bag (which I think is pretty impressive!), so there was some organization in there, but the box containing all the bags of scraps was bursting at the seams. I felt a need to DO SOMETHING about all the scraps – ideally, to do something with all the scraps. So, I looked through my old issues of Quiltmaker and got some books about scrap quilts from the library. I found that some scrap quilts are too scrappy for me – I need some degree of organization for it to look good to me. One that I liked was Chinese Coins, which you can see here. I also found a book about Nickel quilts (quilts from 5″ squares) which had some interesting patterns. So, I decided to go through my scraps and impose some order. I’m working on cutting my scraps into 5″ squares, 5″ by 2.5″ rectangles, and 2.5″ squares. If it’s smaller than a 2.5″ square, I’m throwing it out! (Well, most of the time…) I’m a little surprised that I’m enjoying cutting up the scraps so much – finding fabric from previous quilts I’ve made is a little like catching up with an old friend! I don’t plan to do much more than that just yet – I’ve got the two baby quilts to finish, and I heard yesterday at the playground that one of the moms had gone into labor that day, so I’d better get going!

One of the highlights of our recent Tulip Time trip was a trip to the fabric store with Marty to spend some of my birthday gift certificate to said fabric store. I fell in love with this fabric and just had to buy it. I didn’t have any specific plans for it but who needs specific plans to buy fabric? I had been thinking about making a table runner for our dining room table, which is used less frequently now that we have a breakfast booth in the kitchen and often eat dinner outside on the screened in porch. I’m thinking about using this pattern from the most recent issue of Quiltmaker. It’s quite small – the applique blocks are only 6″ and it’s only 22″ long total, so I’m thinking of enlarging the blocks to 9″ and possibly widening the borders so that it’s better proportioned for our table. The fabric I got is directional, so that provides an additional challenge. We’ll see what happens.

We were up in Michigan for Tulip Time last week and had a great time. I got to go to the Tulip Time quilt show with Marty and go shopping at the fabric store to spend some of my birthday gift certificate. (More on that in a later post.) And I got to use Marty’s wonderful sewing machine to quilt this baby quilt. Most of the time I am quite content with my simple 13 year old Singer sewing machine, but when I’m machine quilting, I really notice the difference between my machine and Marty’s. It may be hard to see the quilting in the picture because I used monofilament thread on the top and quilted in the ditch. It was quite enjoyable to do and went quickly – both because of Marty’s machine and the entertainment provided to the boys, which let me work with few interruptions.

Here’s the finished sailboat quilt top with the sailboat fabric borders added. I’m very pleased with how it turned out. If I have my act together enough when it’s finished, I may send a picture in to Quiltmaker!

Here’s what I’ve been up to most recently: a baby quilt for friends of ours who are expecting their second boy in early June. Their older son turned 2 in January and loves trucks (who doesn’t?), so I made him a matching pillowcase. The theme fabric was given to me a while ago by Marty.

Now I’m looking for inspiration for another boy baby quilt for other friends of ours who are also expecting a boy in early June!