Wall Hangings

 

My blog seems to have morphed into a quilting blog instead of a hodge podge of all my interests.  I guess that is to be expected due to the nature of my life at the moment.  Last week as I quilted away, I experienced sadness and uncertainty.  I struggled with the loss of my son and faced a biopsy which I will know more about later this month.  The ups and downs of life are difficult but seem even more so during the winter months.

I am excited February arrived.  I am not a fan of this month, but it shows that January is behind me and spring is that much closer.  I am already excited about gardening season and warm weather.  Alas, I continue to fill my days with my mom’s project.

This last week, I worked on two of her wall hangings.  The only thing left on both of them was a little bit of quilting, blocking, and the binding, simple in many ways.  I still had a little to learn.

My mom must have loved to hand sew.  I am not a fan.  When I pulled out both of these projects, I groaned when I saw the hand sewing needles with thread attached to the material.  She was hand quilting both projects.  I might eventually do some hand quilting, but with all the work there is to do, I prefer fast and machine quilting.  I started with the Christmas wall hanging.  The middle block was almost done.  Just one small section needed to be hand stippled.  I did that up quickly to finish the block. 

I turned to the top and bottom blocks.  She had used a pencil to draw where she wanted all the stitching to be done.  On the top, she had crisscrossed lines.  Easy enough.  I finished that up in no time.  On the bottom block, she wanted parallel lines around the design, but stippling up close to the design.  The lines were no problem, but I didn’t want to do all that stippling by hand.  Really, I think it would have been silly.  Her machine does that stitch in two different ways.

I grabbed some throw away fabric to practice on.  The machine stitch was terrible!!!  No wonder she didn’t use this programmed stitch.  I hated it.  Now, over eighteen years ago, I tried stippling with a free motion foot on my machine that I had at the time.  I grabbed Mom’s free motion foot, switched the feet, and played.  The process came back like I did it yesterday.  I took a deep breath.  The first area went without a hitch.  Within about thirty minutes, I finished up the quilting.  Yay.  Now, I can see an issue or two in my work, but nothing that most people would notice.  I blocked the piece and put on the binding.  I am pretty happy with the results.  Oh, I had to hand wash the lines off the material where my mom drew because they could be seen.

 

The next project, I am sure Mom would be annoyed with how I finished it.  On the right and bottom, she chalked where she wanted to put the word WELCOME on the hanging.  I am sure she planned to appliqué the letters.  I am not ready to get to appliqué.  Besides, I think I want to keep this piece and didn’t want the words on the piece.  When I blocked the project, I just cut off the extra fabric.  I also had to wash off the markings. 

 

All in all, I am happy with both projects.  I relearned stippling.  I continue to marvel at how I approach sewing so differently than Mom.  Also, I prefer pins over stitches.  With the before picture of the birdhouse, the stitches to hold the front, middle, and back of the stitch had to be cleaned up.  I prefer using the quilting pins instead.  Of course, I have been quilting for less than a year.  Maybe when I hit Mom’s status, I will be doing this stitching thing too.