Despite the horrible rain and flooding that's going on across the southern part of the state, we are relatively safe and dry. Our house is on the top of a hill and we have a small swamp at the bottom of the hill that can take huge amounts of water, so we don't have to worry about flooding. But there are many people to worry about and pray for. Already three have died and thousands of people have been evacuated and have lost homes. This link from weather.com shows how serious the flooding is and how dangerous:
Throughout the day more and more roads were closed, and we've gotten reports of people needing three or four hours to drive home in what would normally be a 45 minute drive because the traffic was so backed up and many roads were closed. Some of those are family members and friends, so I've been quilting and praying.
I loaded another quilt on the long-arm this morning. This one is a huge (king size) quilt for one of the boys and his wife. I wrote about piecing it here, but it's been at least two weeks since then. In fact the quilt top sat pinned to the design wall for the entire week because I was trying to get started in school. There's no way that I can start school and find the energy to do anything when I get home.
After the top was loaded, I got started quilting and decided I had to figure out how to deal with this problem--puckering and bunching in some of the corners.
I found that if I carefully quilted those corners so that the circle stitches landed right on the edges of the seam, the fabric lay flat and the excess somehow ended up inside of the circle. I used that method for every corner that wanted to pucker or bunch up.
Happily, they all look okay! I also cheated by mixing in some really big circles with the medium and small circles. It still took way longer than I thought it would, but I think that's because the quilt is so very wide. It's been a long, long time since I last quilted a king quilt.
I did eventually finish those circles and started working on a smaller section of matchsticks. I like this design and it goes much faster than you'd think, so I may use it again later in the quilt.
To add another design element, I made the matchsticks of different lengths and left about 1/4 inch between them so that they have a "path" going through the design.
I do like this motif...what do you think? Can you see the curvy path between the stitching lines?
2 comments:
Very successful problem solving with your quilting. It looks good.
I followed your link about the flooding. It does look really bad. Such a difficult situation for so many families!
Thanks Karen! I'm enjoying working on it.
The flooding is as bad as if we'd had a hurricane. But already people are returning to their homes and beginning the cleanup.
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