It's Not Touching the Floor!

There's sort of an unspoken idea about standing and quilting at the frame...especially if it's a big quilt, or you have been at the project for a long time. That is when the quilt batting is no longer touching the floor your making real progress! I am especially happy to see this happening with this quilt as it seems I've been working on it for weeks and weeks.


This is one of my UFO's from the list. The background fabric is a vintage bubble gum pink from the 30's. It is a bit faded, but still in good condition. I started quilting this top two weeks ago. It's not touching the floor anymore! Yes!

Carolynn and I were talking on the phone today and she said you haven't blogged about quilting lately. What are you working on? Well, honestly I haven't been sewing or piecing in ages. (Not since Bill's surgery.) But, I've been standing and quilting!



I wanted to learn how to do Vivian's "Swirly Curly Thing". She kindly put a tutorial on her blog. Thank you Vivian! Mine are small swirls and not as wonderful as yours. But, I'm getting lot's of practice with this project!



Outlining quilting the flowers has been the most time consuming part of doing this quilt. Perhaps because as I'm stitching around the outside petal edges I frequently stop and admire the wonderful fabrics and wonder about the quilter who worked so hard making this quilt. How much time it must have taken cutting each petal with a template, and all the hours she spent stitching them into place on each pink fabric square.

The fabrics appear to be a mix of feed sack prints and 30's prints. I don't know the history on this quilt as I bought it at an estate flea market sale and the couple who sold it to me didn't know anything about it either. It has the original solid bubble gum pink backing fabric which I'm using. It was stuffed and tied. The cotton batting had wadded into big clumps of shredded cotton at the tied corners. I took it apart and washed the backing fabric. I'm waiting until I get the binding on, then I will wash the quilt in some Biz to see if I can remove some of the minor stains. It's really in good condition considering it's not been cared for.



There are seldom any repeats of the fabrics used to make the daisy flowers. Notice the quilter maker appliqued the edges with a blanket stitch and used black thread. Pretty effect! It's been fun completing this project, and I'm lucky to have a stash of some old thirty prints I plan to cut into strips for the binding. I'll post pictures when it's all done.