OMG Finishes

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

After my holiday I decided I needed to reacquaint myself with Remy-my longarm before I quilted the elephant quilt. I found this top I started years ago and never finished and now can't remember what the plan was for it so decided to just quilt it up-it has finished at 35x52 inches and has a nice flannel backing so will keep a little child warm.
No matter where I tried to photograph this the true colours never showed-it is a lot more vibrant than it looks here.
Quilted with freeform leaves and circles-liked how it turned out.
Backing of left over pieces of flannel.
Then it was onto the elephant quilt that ended up giving me a lot of issues, but I do like the end result . I backed it with a red minkee dot-mistake number one but by the time I realized it would be an issue I had already ditch stitched and stitched around all the applique so I was not going to unpick all that.
It was at that point that a Webinair by Kim Brunner came up in my Facebook feed so I sat and watched it-well worth it. It was about loading and keeping a quilt square on your longarm and in it she said if using light fabric on the front that has a lot of negative space think carefully about a dark backing fabric as it will give a coloured tint to the front-So true but too late.
In the end the pink glow is not so much of an issue as the baby has now delivered and she is a healthy little girl (they did not know whether they were having a girl or a boy) .
The major issue I had was with the red minkee pulling through to the top, especially when I was using red bobbin thread and it wasn't a tension issue, so very frustrating and resulted in a lot of unpicking-in fact I think I spent longer unpicking than quilting!! Next I tried a grey bobbin-(I personally like my bobbin thread to blend with the backing, not necessarily matching the top thread.) and that just ended with more unpicking. Finally I gave in and loaded a white thread and although not perfect it is passable. I have since read on MQ Resource that a quilter had the same problem with orange minkee which she solved with two layers of batting-too late for me!! I think in the future I will stick to the lighter colours as I have never had a problem with them. I do however have a client quilt to do that she supplied a bright lime green minkee so I hope that one behaves.
I wonder how many more elephant quilts I have in my future. I love both the ones I have done so far and got a call from the recipient of the yellow and grey one to say how much she loved it and they were her favourite colours (did not know that when I made it). Wonderful to hear the quilt is being used.





3 comments:

  1. Both look really good. The elephant one looks like apart from the thread/minkee issue there was some great quilting.

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  2. I've used Minky twice now and both times it was a dream. One was a turquoise and the other a textured ivory. I ADORE the gorgeous quilting you did again on this one; ha, can I relate to getting reacquainted with my longarm. It just struck me that it's much like an absence from yoga; I feel rather 'groany' and stiff and generally sore afterwards. Amazing how quickly you lose the flow of something, but the good news is it does come back, as your beautiful finish can attest to!

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  3. Good on you for soldiering on and finishing with a beautiful quilt for the wee baby girl. A shame you had trouble with the minky as it looks so good on there! I've used minky a couple of times, and it performed well, hopefully next time it will behave for you :-)

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Comments and suggestions welcome

Marlene