Saturday, September 25, 2010

Fall has arrived

Brrrrr! Yesterday, we had a high temp of 87 (20 degrees higher than normal) with wind gusts of 40 mph and today, we’re down to a high temp of 56 degrees.  Strange weather we’ve had all summer long, and now the weird weather seems to be stretching into fall.  No gradual lowering of the temperature.  Nope, we went from hot summer right to cool fall.  Oh, well, it’s time to celebrate fall so I redecorated my blog.

You haven’t heard from me for a while because I’ve actually been quilting for a change.  The French Braid class I took did what I wanted it to do, which was to give me a deadline to work towards each week as I got closer to the class date.  I used the class as an excuse to take some days off work.  I do think my mind may have been elsewhere while I was quilting. In the picture below, the squares at the top of the picture are all supposed to look the same—the middle strip was sewn correctly (right sides together).  
Fenton & Marshall QS 035
Did you ever wonder how you can sew two pieces of fabric wrong sides together, take it to the ironing board to iron, take it to the rotary mat and cross cut it into several strips, sew it to the quilt and only then figure out that something wasn’t quite right? (But my points matched!!!)

Fenton & Marshall QS 034

I got most of the quilt done, and only need to cut and attach the final border.  I did manage to master a mitered border on this one.

french braid
I generally avoid mitered borders, but the striped border I chose just begged for mitering.  Since I was in a class, I took advantage of the teacher’s help to show me how to do this.  The method the teacher used was so simple that I don’t know why I had such a fear of it prior to this.

This is one of the lovely ladies I met in class.  Her quilt had several beautiful batiks in lovely magenta shades.  The purple quilt on the wall was the class sample.

Fenton & Marshall QS 037
This was another class quilt in progress.  I love the colors that were used in this quilt.
Fenton & Marshall QS 036
I don’t have any pictures of my quilt yet, but when I do, I’ll get them posted.  I have managed to keep up with reading everyone’s blogs, even though I haven’t been commenting too much.  Thanks to everyone for visiting and I do appreciate all of your comments!!