Category: Quilting and Sewing

Boy, do I feel like I’m being swept away by life lately.  There’s this breathless feeling of always needing to be moving, wishing it was otherwise, driven by urgent items to tackle.  What makes the feeling worse is looking at the calendar and not seeing when it will let up.  Have you noticed that feeling like you have to keep up a frenzied pace indefinitely makes today’s pace even harder?  A friend of mine recently reminded me to take it one day at a time and not look too far into the future…

So today I’ll be relying on the Lord for our daily bread.

Anyway, after my indecisive approach to the Sparkle Punch baby quilt, I took my sister’s advice and went with diagonal lines on the quilt.  It’s actually the least quilting I’ve ever done but it works.  I went with every other row so the quilting would be as unnoticeable as possible.


The back of the quilt is a piece of light pink minky fabric with roses embossed on it.  Another reason to avoid heavy quilting.


Because the backing is heavier and the quilt top has flannel on it, I went with white flannel in the middle instead of batting. I like the weight of the quilt overall.


I just happened to have this vintagey pink binding already made so on it went.  It was machine binding once again for the sake of time.


And it’s done.  I really like it.  As tedious as it was to make, I’m very happy with it.  It took about 10 minutes to make each star, and this quilt has around 35 stars in it.   I’d like to make another one of these sometime.


Now it awaits delivery!

I should be quilting the sparkle punch baby quilt, but I’m still not sure about it, and the swoon blocks are calling my name…


Five of them are now finished.  Four more to go and then the sashing.  I’m really excited about this quilt.

Over the past week there has been slow but steady progress in the making of these little stars until at last all the pieces were laid out in place and I was done making and trimming wonky points!


Then row by row it took shape and is now a pretty little quilt top.


You know, I really like it!  The prints are all flannels and the background is a Moda white, no idea which one.  I like the mix of flannel and cotton.  Mostly I love these little stars with their wonky points.  I do feel like this quilt top was slow going but I think it’s worth it.  The more I look at it the more I also like the white design between the stars as well.

Now I need to quilt it.  I have a lovely minky piece for the back but no idea how to tackle the front.  Honestly, it would probably be best with some kind of free motion quilting, but all I know is straight line.  I had a conversation last night with my daughter that went something like this:

“Mom, you should sew it with little stars all over it!”

Me:  “I don’t know how to do that.”

“Mom, you should do that all over the place swirl design on it.”

Me:  “I don’t know how to do that.”

“Mom, you should make vines and flowers all over it!”

Me:  “I don’t know how to do that.”

“Mom, what do you know how to do?”

Me:  “Good question.  Straight lines.”

And honestly, with all the stars bumping up against each other, I don’t even know how to do straight lines on this quilt and have it look good.  It’s going to be tricky to figure it out, so I’ve set it aside for a day or two while I brainstorm.  And clean the house.


HH