Working those Neutrals

It’s been another busy week here, but at least I was able to spend lots of time down in my studio, sewing my cares away. There was quite a variety of things to work on this week. My ADQD (Attention Deficit Quilting Disorder) was in overdrive, so I switched between sewing neutral string blocks, quilting the pineapple quilt, and sewing tulips and leaves. And mending clothes, sewing on buttons, etc. Life in the fast lane. Not.


But there is a method to my madness. The needle in my machine needed changing, so I figured that sewing on a paper base in order to do the 4.5” neutral string blocks would be better on the old needle. Therefore, for three days I cut, sewed and trimmed blocks. The result was 78 (of 168 needed) neutral string blocks.


There are plenty more strings and scraps and fabrics where these came from, and I will be working on them throughout the month.  Come visit us over at Angela’s blog for Scrappy Saturday. Lots of us are working through our neutral scraps this month!

Anyway, by Wednesday I put a new needle in the machine and switched to quilting the pineapple quilt, which I had basted on Monday. The first thing I did on the pineapple quilt was to stitch all the vertical seams in the ditch with my walking foot.

And then I began doing X quilting in the pineapples themselves. So much moving and shifting the quilt around (!) and my Bernina has an average-at-best harp space. My shoulders hurt after quilting five pineapples. So, I set myself a goal of quilting 5 pineapples a day. With 24 pineapples in the quilt, that will take 5 days. To date, I have completed 15; 9 left to go. I’m using a light, icy yellow on the front instead of white - not that you can really tell from this picture. The thread on the back is a variegated light green. When I finish the quilt next week, I’ll have pictures.

After quilting my quota of 5 pineapples a day, I figured it was a good time to start assembling tulips and leaves for the quilt that my friend Terri and I are making for our friend Diane.

I originally added the gold color in because there is gold in the small pink floral print that you see in almost every tulip. But I think the gold strips overpower the pastels and need to be taken out and substituted with another pastel (probably that aqua with pink strawberries). What do you think?

All the tulips will have a stem and leaves; that is the next step. And this is only half the tulips anyway; Terri is making the other half of them.

So now I am a stem-and-leaf-making fool, and hope to get those done this week in addition to finishing the pineapple quilt and making the rest of the neutral strip blocks.  The next project on the horizon is Bruce’s guitar quilt....

Finally, if you have a moment, why not stop by Lily Pad Quilting and the Pets on Quilts Show for 2017. Darla, my sweet quilting tabby, is entered in the Cats on Quilts category. You can visit the linky party HERE. Voting will open next week, and we hope you will consider voting for Darla, the Quilting Cat!

And now, it’s back to the sewing room for me...... unless Darla is using the machine! (wink)