It's been awhile........................

since I posted on my blog...........you know the drill......busy with holidays and family!  Tonight I'll show you two quilts (am experimenting with higher resolution photos hoping they will enlarge better, and now I think I also need to make the flash stronger!).  The Churn Dash is from quite a few years ago using Judie Rothermel's first Civil War line in late 1990's (some fabrics have been reproduced again recently)....one of my favorites and it was an experiment in using 6" charm squares for the blocks. 

Second quilt is a 16-Patch from one of Jo Morton's early Clubs.  It was the first quilt I machine-quilted that I was happy with my quilting!  And it was rather accidental!  I was quilting the straight lines and had lengthened my stitch as usual for quilting.  Then I noticed that my stitches were quite tiny.....my robe sleeve must have turned the stitch length dial on my machine...but hey!  I liked the look of the smaller stitches anyway!  So I took out the longer ones, knowing it would be very hard to take out these small stitches if I made a mistake.  Luckily, it worked out fine!

This last quilt top is one from a Prairie Women's Sewing Circle club that I decided to do in different colors.  First one, in blue and shirting, is pictured aways back the blog.  I love the color called "cheddar" and it looks great with the indigo blue!  I machine-quilted the first one but may hand-quilt this one....wish I could handquilt everything but it's not possible!  Today I spent part of my "day off" pin-basting 3 small quilts and am in the process of pin-basting my Gwen Marston-inspired toile center medallion...hard on my back to do it all at once!  I pin-baste my quilts on the dining room table (anchor small ones with masking tape and larger ones with bulldog clips along the edge of the table.)  Then, I either machine-quilt (mostly just in the ditch or straight lines across the blocks as might have been done "in the old days") OR machine-baste for handquilting.......seems like overkill to baste twice but I think it helps make my quilts nice and flat!  Quilter's Dream Request is my usual choice of batting but I also use Mountain Mist Blue Ribbon sometimes.