Tuesday, March 20, 2007

OH NOOOOOOOoooooo.....

yesterday I started the stitching in the ditch of the court house steps quilt... when I realized I PUT A BLOCK IN UPSIDE DOWN!!! it's far to late to un-sew and re do it now, but it keeps staring at me... there it is clear as day... GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh well, life goes on... I have yet to make a perfect project so this is no exception!

The quilting is going well... I've done enough ditch stitching to hold it all together... I was a little daring with my thread choice... I used a matching red on the top and in the bobbin since the tension on my machine isn't right so you can see the bobbin on the top and top thread on the back.... rather than trying to fix that I just improvised, the reason it is daring is the backing is the same light color I used for the background of the redwork, so we'll.. the back shows all the stitches... quite well.... I knew I would have to use a red for stitching in the ditch on the borders, and probably could have gotten away with using light color when I outlined the light squares... but I just wanted to do it all the same.... less times changing thread and winding bobbins means more time sewing, eh?

I still don't know what I'm going do where there is redwork... it needs something on those blocks to hold it all together but don't know what... any ideas?

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Granny....


This is Buddy's favorite afghan. It sits on our rocking chair in our living room.... I finished it last fall... I only started it 4 years ago. (I would have abandoned it a long time ago if Ben hadn't kept asking why I hadn't finished it yet) the whole time I kept saying "I hate granny squares". All those loose ends to weave in... then when it seems like it's almost done you have all those squares to stitch together.. eek...

so what do I do after loathing this afghan for the past 4 years... I make another granny square afghan... it's for a gift so you'll have to wait to see it... I'll post it when it's given....

here comes the Judge... again...

Okay, I'm ready to think about the judge quilt again...
(check this out in case you forgot where we were...) http://prairiedawn.blogspot.com/2007/02/here-comes-judge.html
let us continue... shall we...
I've been thinking about the borders more... I went back to the original fabric I planned for borders and started to think it might be just what the quilt needs... . It isn't in the quilt at all so I don't know if that is good or bad. It does have the right color scheme, so I suppose that is good.
I like Morgans suggestion of the cornerstone with more redwork, but I really don't want to do that much more redwork.... I'm planning on putting another small redwork design on the label on the back along with using the same floss to embroider the label... speaking of label... got any clever ideas for a title or short explanation for the quilt... it's gotta make note of the fact that it's a courthouse steps design for sure... okay, back to borders...
here is a couple options...



The light boarders are left over strips from the quilt... I cut a bit too much... oops, but hey, it helps now....
I'm planning on doing a dark inner border... light red second border, then dark binding...




option 1: I like this best, but I would have to buy more fabric to finish it... (click on the pic for a close up)




Option 2: I have enough of this one... but don't think I like it as much... i like it.. but not as much... I think it's a bit too light or something...


I initially thought of using the same light I used as background of the redwork for the second border, but think that is too light for the border... especially since I think option 2 is a bit on the light side, the background ecru shade is definitely too light...

hmm... dilemmas....