Finally Finished!

I finished binding this one last night.  It is the quilt top that I made back in December featured in the Jesus and Me Take Three post.  It is machine pieced and hand quilted.  It is quilted in the ditch on all the seams, but because the patches are large, I needed to add more quilting.  I quilted suns in the pink squares.  The green half square triangle patches got a diagonal line (perpendicular to the seam) quilted in them.  I also quilted a line perpendicular to the seam that joins the stripe fabric to the Jesus and Me fabric.  The binding is the stripe fabric and the backing is a sunny yellow fabric.  The quilt finished 40 inches square.

It's been a while since I finished a quilt.  Looking back I see that the last quilt I finished was the Snowmen on Parade quilt that I donated to Project Linus back in February of last year.  I've finished some smaller projects (pillows, postcards, etc.) and made some quilt tops, but it feels good to actually finish a quilt again for a change.

Oh, and this was the first quilt that I quilted using my new Ulmer Quilter quilting frame.  I think it works well, and the quilt turned out really nice and square.  But it will take some getting used to because I'm used to an old fashion frame that stretches the whole quilt out at once.

Balloon Postcard

Today's creation is another fabric postcard.  This one features a 2-1/2 x 4 inch hot-air balloon surrounded by cloud fabric to finish 4 x 6 inches.  The quilting lines are intended to mimic the cords on a hot-air balloon.  The edges are finished with a satin stitch.  I'd be happier if I could over-lock the edges, but I don't have a serger, so this will have to do.

Tradition With A Twist

My most recent row swap row is called "tradition with a twist".  The idea is to make traditional blocks using brightly colored fabrics.  My row is the row on the bottom.  It is a Greek Cross block. 

My first attempt was this Day and Night block, which would have been very striking in green and solid black.  But, because the focus fabric (the black multicolored fabric) has so many colors in it, the pattern gets a little lost.  Eleanor Burns specifically warns against using a multicolor as the night fabric, but I wasn't thinking about that when I tried it. 

When that didn't work, I decided to go with a little simpler block instead.  I'm happy with how my finished row turned out.  We only have one more month left in the swap.  I'm really interested in seeing how all the quilts turn out.

Little Mittens top complete

Last night I finally finished the appliqued strings that connect the pairs of mittens in my "Little Mittens" quilt top.  I'm very happy to have all of that applique behind me.  That's one more completed quilt top for the pile.  Now I just need to find backing fabric and binding fabric, then it can get quilted . . . eventually.

Coco in Scraps

Just for fun, I thought I would post a picture of my fluffy black cat playing in my fabric scraps.  As any quilter with a cat knows, cats love to help out any way they can.  At least I'm sure they think they are helping. . .

Sewing Machines

I'm looking for some advice on sewing machines.  I'd really like to get a new sewing machine, but I'm not sure what to buy.  I want to get a good quality machine, but I don't want to pay for a lot of features that I don't really think I will use. 
Here are the features I'm really looking for in a machine:
A good 1/4 inch foot that will sew a good straight seam.  (The one I have now tends to veer to the side pretty badly, especially when I cross a seam.)
Sews well on paper, because I do a lot of paper piecing.  (The machine I have now seems to have tension issues/inconsistencies with paper piecing.) 
Sews well over thick seams.  (My current machine likes to just stop and sew in place when it gets to a seam of practically any thickness.)
A good walking foot for attaching binding or simple straight line quilting.  (My current walking foot doesn't even rest evenly on the fabric for some reason)

Nice but not necessary features:
Needle Up/Down feature
Auto thread cutting
Auto stitch lock feature

Features I don't need:
Free-motion quilt - don't do it, don't plan to start
Lots of fancy stitches

My current machine is a Singer 5830C (I think, that's the only thing on the machine that looked like a model number). 

Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated.

Mom's Apple Pie block

 I finally decided that the best representation of food and home was Mom's apple pie, not that my actually made apple pie, but you know.  I adapted the pie slice from a pattern in the July 2004 issue of McCall's Quick Quilts called "Pie in the Sky".  I set the slice down flat and put it on a plate to match the tea cup.  The tea cup (or coffee cup, whichever you please) came from "Java Jitters" published in the May/June 2002 issue of Quiltmaker.  The fabric across the bottom is supposed to be a table cloth.

 Here is the finished row.  The three blocks are set together with 1.25 inch strips in between them.

Here is the row at the bottom of all the other rows for this quilt so far.  I think it fits in pretty well with the others.

Fabric Fortune Cookie

Here is the cute little fortune cookie I made the other day after accidentally coming across this easy tutorial over at Mollie Makes.  I was actually doing a Google image search for food related quilt blocks for my "There No Place Like Home" row swap quilt when I saw a picture of an adorable fabric fortune cookie.  Since I just happened to have some felt on hand, I felt compelled to go down to my sewing room and give it try.  In a matter of minutes I had this little beauty made.  What took the longest time in the whole process was finding something to trace around to make a 5 inch circle.  I ended up using a large can of canned chicken I had in the pantry.  For the fortune inside the cookie I wrote "You will smile while reading this".  I smile just seeing it.  So much fun!