Double Nine Patch

It has been a while, hasn't it? I have been busy the last few months, doing this and that. There have been so many other things going on that I neglected blogging until now I am embarrassed about the length of time I've been absent.

Da is completely recovered from his surgery. It is like he never had a life threatening episode this past summer.

While he was mending, I started another quilt, imagine that!

I can, and have, made a wedding quilt in under a week, but I decided at the outset that I wanted to try out and learn some new techniques so I was not going to allow myself to get all stressed out about making any self-imposed deadlines. I just needed to relax after the stress of Da's surgery. I figured that the intended wedding couple would stay married long enough to get a present three months late, and they did.
Onyx really wanted to be a part of this quilt. That little tail of hers kept flipping in and out of the sewing area. I'm sure some of her fur is well preserved in the depths of the stitches. She was not harmed in the making of this quilt.

I find this kind of pile very satisfying. It means I was on a roll and getting lots done.

I am still learning how to make quilts. Or rather how NOT to make quilts. I intend to learn something on each one, and that is why I attempt new things and techniques. I had a physics professor say that one hasn't really learned anything until one has made all possible mistakes. I learned a lot on this quilt.

See the bread rising in the background? It must be close to me and in sight because I get too involved while I'm sewing. I don't know how many times I have allowed the loaf to overflow its pan and make a mess. Then it gets so ugly that I have to start all over in order to have something presentable for B of B meeting. Don't worry, Da and I enjoy eating ugly bread so it doesn't go to waste. Besides, can you think of a better use for those hand weights?

This technique is one I won't do again. It may look okay, but it was just not worth the struggle. I wanted to use my new embroidery machine to embellish the large, plain areas of the quilt but it was just too big and unwieldy to wrestle into position and keep track of. (The close-up has funny lighting, it really is brown on brown.)
This is a much better use of the embroidery machine. I now have my favorite "wedding verse" which I designed on my computer saved on a memory stick and in my machine's memory ready for the next pillow.

Yes, I did use some of that three months to learn that computer embroidery program and I even took a refresher class in how to get the embroidery machine to do exactly what I wanted. Time well spent.

The other new thing I learned with this quilt is how to set the blocks on point so that the little squares go vertically and horizontally instead of diagonally. I made a bunch of mistakes but I will use this technique again. I like how it changed the whole character of the quilt.

I hope the couple enjoys this quilt, I had fun making it.