Quilting can be painful....

My little helper doesn't help much when I am marking...

I ummed and ahhed over whether to use two thicknesses of batting or to trapunto this. I went with the latter (someone give my brain a nudge). I started on a box of new safety pins. Why on earth do they arrive closed? I think I probably used a few hundred pinning this quilt. Pinning wasn't so hard, I pinned them in place and sat of the sofa watching TV whilst I closed them. Opening them was the problem, I ended up with a very sore left first finger and thumb. But this is not the reason quilting hurts. I stitched round every flower, every stem and every feather with freemotion quilting using water soluble thread.  I love the effect but had forgotten that if you are planning this, then it is a good idea not to do it on something with as many elements with so many shapes.....

Then I started cutting away the excess batting. This is taking ages and I cannot do it for more than a couple of hours or so without a break.

And this is why quilting can be painful right now. So far these are the only scissors which slide nicely between the batting and the quilt top. (you have to be very careful not to cut through the quilt top, very very careful)

I end up with a red sore bit on my thumb knuckle and the gouge you can see is the bit that hurts the most. It goes back into shape after an hour or so......

These are the ones I have tried. The top stork scissors are too small, the next are the ones which hurt, the silver ones are the new Sulivans with nice big finger holes but their points want to go through the quilt fabric as well as the batting. The green handled ones are the Karen K Buckley ones, I have been told if I sand off the tips of these with an emery board, they might be OK and the Fiskars are just too big except for alongside the straightish bits like the intertwined chain on the outer border.

As I am writing this post, the postman arrived with this selection. I have yet to try them so will let you know how I get on with them.

I went shopping in Monmouth yesterday, I was bitterly cold and the ducks were all hunkered down on the river bank. I cannot imagine they are very safe from foxes here. The river has quite a bit of water in it right now and I imagine that they normally reside on little islands.

I know may of you live in Australia and the USA and don't get to see many things this old, so here is a photo I took yesterday of the Monnow Bridge right by my local supermarket. It is 7 or 8 hundred years old. It is only open to pedestrians these days. You can find out more here.

I am counting the cutting out of the trapunto as hand work and therefore to do it in the evenings (quite honestly, it would hurt too much to work on cutting it all day). So I have decided to go back to my version of Esther Aliu's Heart's Desire. It has moved house with me without me adding anything to it in the last couple of years. I love this quilt, I love the design of it but I do admit to not getting the same satisfaction on working on the design of another. I am finding the same thing with the Di Ford Mystery Quilt, it is another lovely quilt, another lovely deisgn but it doesn't give me the same excitement as working on something I make from the design process onward. So it you hear me say I will start another of another designer's work, please remind me that however wonderful it may be, I will not feel the same engagement with it. I stumbled a little on my Heart's Desire when I appliqued a top and bottom border only to find I had not allowed for the sashings in my measurements and then we moved house. So onwards and upwards, I shall finish it, not sure how just yet but I will!

Bits and bobs

I promised Quilt Direct a sample of machine quilting with YLI silk thread as they are such a lovely company to deal with. So I did this little piece yesterday and of course I didn't warm up first so it's quite dire. The stitching is far too big for this thread on the feather (and perhaps the wrong thread anyway for something so dominant) and in the background quilting I managed to get a pleat. Haven't done that for years so another little piece shall have to be done.
Sorry about the quality of this photo, I took it with my phone and forgot to put the anti shake on. I did want to show you how difficult the simplest of quilts was to pin. The fabric is my favourite Heide Stoll Weber hand dyed cotton sateen. This fabric just glows but my goodness it does have a lot of stretch. Keeping those seams straight when pinning was a major achievement.

Another shot to show you how well that backing fabric goes with the front. Notice how I haven't closed the pins, it's so much easier to close them later when sitting on the sofa watching TV.

And this is 3 evenings work cutting away the trapunto on the hand coloured quilt. I think I put in my entry form for Birmingham that it had no trapunto and realised that half way through stitching with the water soluble thread. Thank heavens this show gives you an opportunity to correct your entry information.

Water Soluble Thread

It's not often I use dark fabric and dark batting with trapunto work so I took these photos today as you can see the stitch easily. You only need to quilt with the water soluble thread outside your motif so it doesn't take as long as you might think. And you don't have to be amazingly accurate as if you go outside the line the background quilting will hold down and inside the line the other stitching in the motif will hold it in place. The exception to this is when you do shadow trapunto and then you must be as accurate as you would be with the final quilting.
The back
The front.


All done to Lou Reed, Walk on the Wildside and Leonard Cohen's Allelujah (sp?) with me singing along.
I found a neat little thing on blogger toady. If you have your home town in your profile, you can click on it and it will show you all the other bloggers in your area. 107 in Fleet. Sadly most of them abandoned, but one by a skateboarding friend of my DD and one of her school mates from way back when. Seems like I might be not only the most prolific but also the 'oldest blogger in town' (sad that, grin). Though there was another blogger building a kit car with a non disclosed age who could be older........