Hello from Bloomington Indiana where I am on lunch break between halves of my Embroidery and Beading for Quilters class at the Indian Heritage Quilt Show!
It was a lovely drive in the sunshine yesterday and I’m having a good time.
But I was home last week and I actually got to sit at my machine and make something 🙂
Our Naperville Modern Quilters Guild likes its challenges and we are on a deadline to make quilts to hang in an exhibit this summer. As the co-ordinator I do feel a certain level of responsibility and the need to make an entry myself…
So it was that last week I made my entry in the Modern Strings Challenge.
I started with a 27″ square of almost white cotton and some one inch strips (my strings)…
I took a picture of my proposed lay out and set about stitching it all together. (You can see the fabric I cut the strings from in this next picture).
Ta Da!
I added an extra strip of orange to my original plan. Really it was just two halves of one piece?
Time to layer and quilt. How about some straight line quilting with my walking foot? I used the 1/4″ foot and Dual Feed System on my BERNINA 740 to make the irregular straight sided spirals easy(ish).
The challenge rules included a size requirement of 24″ on each side so I needed to trim a little off. From past experience I know dense quilting shrinks your piece and I needed a seam allowance for the facings I wanted to finish the edge with, so it was good that I had started with that 27″ square!
And here we are… Strings in the Spotlight… finished! 
I was done a whole day early for last Thursday evening’s meeting.
We are now meeting at BERNINA of Naperville, the new store in town. I wanted to make sure I had time for a good look around before we started. I found some Art Gallery Fabric that I really wanted but honestly, was I going to ever use it if I bought it? I had an idea… I had time to make a couple of doll quilts and two grandchildren are turning two next week and they are getting baby dolls…
That was easy! Here’s Joanne’s vintage Bitty Baby checking them out pre-washing…
and after a wash…
I don’t know that you can see how soft and crinkly the washed quilts are? Steve is going to be taking them to the party on Sunday while I am on my way home from here. Too much fun!
