October One Monthly Goal

Hi Quilting Friends,

My “One Monthly Goal” for October was to quilt two corners on the “Lone Star” quilt. Ta-done, and we’re here today to celebrate!

Here’s a finished corner with its machine quilted background spaces. I like how the close diagonal quilting helps the hand-quited feathered wreaths and feathered triangle “pop” out.

I don’t have a quilting template specifically for a corner this large, so I improvised by combining the feathered wreath and two feathered triangles to fill most of the corner space.  I think it looks fine, and it ties the edges and corners together by using the same motif.

I (briefly) considered hand quilting the remaining area between the quilted motifs and the edges of the quilt, but I opted to make it easier on myself with some machine quilting.  The central Lone Star is already machine quilted, so why not!  Besides, it is much too slow and boring to hand quilt parallel lines with quarter-inch spacing.  This choice ensures that “Lone Star” has a very high probability of making it to the finish line in 2025.

I had some unsolicited “help” with my hand quilting, as you can see below. I was happily quilting the opposite corner while watching a video, and “the girls” (Astrid and Freya) were playing together near my chair, or so I thought. . .

Grrrr. . . It’s apparently lots of fun to pull the batting out of Mom’s quilt in progress. Small shreds of batting make a fabulous dog toy, since these two knuckleheads have no toys of their own to play with. Of course I scolded them and made everyone go outside for a break, but I doubt that they’ll recall that this activity is neither authorized nor appreciated.  I will be more vigilant in the future. Good thing they’re cute, right?

I’ve layered in some new batting on this corner to replace what’s missing. The close machine quilting hides any differences in thickness so it looks OK now that it’s done.  I’m just glad that they didn’t tear up the fabric; that would have been SO much harder to repair.

As of today, all four corners have been quilted and I’m on to the binding! The finish line is in sight, after a mere 30 years of waiting. 😁 

Can you take a guess at my November goal?

Until next time, happy quilting,

Sharon

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