Break Time!


When it is storming outside, I give the longarm machine a break. That's to protect it from electrical surges from lightening. I do have it plugged into a surge protector, but when I'm not using the machine, it is completely unplugged.


So, today it is storming. It has been for about 2 hours and is supposed to continue off and on all day, so it's "Break Time!"


I did load the next quilt onto the machine this morning. It's one of my own quilts and is a pattern that I got with some batting or other quilting product I bought last fall. I can't remember exactly what it came it. But, it's a Sudoku quilt! It was fun and easy to assemble, and it has been promised to my youngest DD. Even though she has no comprehension of Sudoku, she loves the bright colors in the quilt.


I am using a white muslin for the backing and 6.6oz poly batting. I haven't decided on the quilting design yet, but am leaning towards a panto. The sample quilt was cross-hatched, but I've found that quilts that get a lot of use - like this one will - cross-hatching doesn't hold up very well. The threads get stretched too much and "pop", and the quilting comes out. Quilts that get heavy use do better without too much straight-line quilting in them in my own humble opinion.


So....the batting is pieced from left-over scraps from previous projects. Whenever I trim off fairly wide sections of batting from a quilt, I save them and piece them together for my own projects. I buy batting on the roll in 90-96" widths in order to accomodate almost all tops I quilt for customers. So when I get a smaller quilt in, I have excess batting to trim off. If the customer doesn't want the trimmings, I save them for charity projects or my own projects. The majority of my customers don't want the left-over batting, so it gives me the incentive to keep creating my own quilts to keep the volume of batting at a managable level ;)


Since I don't have a photo of the current quilt in progress to show just yet, I thought I would post a previous project. This is "Fish Extravaganza"! It is a pattern from a QuiltMaker magazine - can't remember which one at the moment - but I do remember that I added a few extra fish to the pattern at my oldest daughter's suggestion. It was entered in the Ozark Empire Fair and won 1st place in the wallhanging category.
Susan

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