Dragonfly Quilt Finished!

Along with many other parents today, it was just a bit harder to drop my kids off at school today.  I've shed more than a few tears over the week-end, along with many people in our country and around the world.  I think we're all trying to find answers.  We're all holding our kids a little closer now.

This dragonfly quilt is all done, and ready to ship off to its new home. It's going to a young woman who is on hospice care right now, as she suffers from systemic scleroderma.  She's lives with her parents whom I've never met, but this will be given as a gift from a relative of mine.  It's an honor to have been able to make this for her.

I found some fabric in my stash, that I had overlooked before, while planning the top, that had, yes, dragonflies on it!  After kicking myself, I decided to use it for the back.  It just happened to match very well.

As tempting as it was to stipple the whole thing, I just had to define the dragonflies a bit more, and am thrilled at how they turned out.  More and more I'm getting just as much satisfaction out of the quilting as I do the piecing!

Working on this quilt as well as reflecting on the events over the week-end reminds me of the most important things in the world... life, the innocence or children, health and well being, both physically and mentally...

WIP Wed: Quilting the Dragonfly

Sorry for the dark picture.  This was taken at 8am, natural light, but this time of year the days get so short here.  It'll be dark again by 4pm.  Our long summer days make up for it, but sometimes I miss the more regular daylight cycles that I grew up with in Louisiana.

I got some quilting done yesterday, hope to do more today, and hope to finish it by Friday!

This is also the first big quilt I've made with my new Janome MC 6600 sewing machine, and all doubts about the decision to sell my Pfaff are now erased.  My new Janome quilts like a dream!  I'm using readily available Coats and Clark thread, and haven't skipped a stitch, broken a thread, or had any problems whatsoever!  It also sails right over all of the thick seams like they aren't even there.  I'm so happy!!! 

I'm not quite as fond of the quilting foot on the Janome as I was with the Pfaff, and I still miss the empty bobbin alarm, but may fish out my old foot from my New Home machine and see if it is better.  The inch less of throat space is barely noticeable. One other feature that I didn't realize would make a difference is that with the manual tension disks on the Janome, I don't have to reset anything when I turn off and on my machine.  With the Pfaff, I had to program in the tension settings when I was quilting each time I turned the machine on.  Ugh!  It's nice to have them set up and stay!  It's also nice to be able to use all of my thread again, and not have to wait for an on-line order of special thread to get delivered to me.

It's Wednesday, so I'm linking up with Lee's WIP Wed.  Come join us!

Snowflakes and Dragonflies

Things have begun to slow down in my non-sewing life lately, and I was able to finally get some sewing done, including the snowflake ornament I made as part of the pre-season Project Quilting challenge.  I did this last year, and it was a blast!  The mini challenge was to make something quilty that used 2 techniques, and was holiday relate.  I've been collecting snowflake ornaments for years now, so decided to make one to add to the bunch.  I pieced the background together, and fuse-appliqued the snowflake onto the background, adding some bling with some iron on rhinestones that I had in my stash.  Kim's Crafty Apple has re-branded herself as Persimmon Dreams.  Click on the link to find out more about the upcoming season of Project Quilting!  I had such a fun time with it last year!!

I also finished sewing up all of the dragonflies.  I hope to get them sewn together into a finished top today!  As I played around more with EQ7 I found that this design is really quite versatile.  Here are a few more layouts, and I think the last one is now my favorite!

This post has a few other layouts.  So.  Much.  Fun!