tessellating design | Quilt Obsession

Friday evening the last stitch was taken to tack down the binding and the baby windmills quilt was finished. Nothing like a last-minute finish — the baby is going to be delivered sometime today. I had decided how I was going to quilt it and, with a little advance planning, was able to get the machine quilting done within a couple of hours and had only 4 thread ends to work in. All straight line quilting, of course, as that’s my skill level when quilting by machine.

When I found this flannel a couple of years ago, I bought enough yardage of it for the backing for 3 baby quilts.

The label is ready to be written and stitched on to the back. As soon as we know the baby’s name, I’ll write out and attach the label, give the quilt a quick wash and dry and we’ll be off to deliver it to the hospital. I’ve found that a 2″ hexagon is perfect for a label as it gives me lots of room to write. I’ve got the turn-under allowance basted down as that will make the appliqueing on to the back go very quickly. Right now it’s ironed to a piece of freezer paper to stabilize it when I’m writing on it and the fabric pen is ready and waiting. I can’t wait to hear if it’s a boy or girl!

The quilt was made with “other” half 1″ hexagons which I printed using Inklingo. This was a UFO that had been sitting for a couple of years. I love tessellating designs and had started this quite a while ago but then it sat. However, when I learned my cousin’s son and his wife were going to have another baby I knew what this particular UFO was meant to be. Once I made that decision, it only took a couple of weeks to finish piecing it. With a tessellating design like this, there are tons of opportunities for continuous stitching which makes the piecing go very quickly.

Lester looking rather majestic — one of his house lion looks.

Smudge has definitely turned a corner, we think. He’s more playful and is eating more every day. Sunday night he was playing with the favourite toy, Cappy, and then decided to rest while lying on top of Cappy. I think he wanted to make sure it didn’t get away from him.

The deluge of work I expected arrived and haven’t had a chance to do much stitching at all this week, but am getting close to finishing piecing the table runner. I think by the time tomorrow night comes around, I will have the piecing finished and can get it basted and start quilting it.

Once the workload eases up a bit, I plan to put together a small quilt using these half hexagon blocks in ’30s prints.

Peonies are my favourite flowers and, when they’re in season I make a point of having a few in a vase. The smell, every time we walk past the piano where the vase is, is just incredible.

This is our little cat, Smokey, who had some serious health problems last summer and finally left us in early September. She was a tiny cat, only about 7 pounds, but she ruled the roost — the two 25-pound boys definitely were no match. She loved it when her basket was placed on a chair — she could watch over the antics of the boys. She had the loudest voice too — we think she may have had some Siamese in her background.