Snowball Night: Week 6

Wohoo! I managed to do Snowball Night posts two weeks in a row. That, in itself, is an achievement.


From last week to this, I've come up with a plan for finishing the first of the two quilts. My sister's wedding shower is coming up next week, so I've decided to get this finished right away so I can have a nice gift for her. I'll do the vests next week. Deciding how to proceed was a big step in this case because free-motion machine quilting a whole quilt is one of those doing-something-I've-never-done-before things that scares me a bit.

I practiced a bit of free-motion quilting today. I'm still pretty craptastic. I'm not planning anything fancy for this quilt, just a small stipple {or some people call it a meander} but my curves are all kind of squarish. I'm much better at a loops-and-swirls sort of free-motion, but I really have a tight stipple pictured in my head for this quilt. I briefly considered doing these pretty loopy flowers, but I think that might be a bit ambitious for my first free-motion quilt. Suggestions? I really wish I had the time {and money} to take it to my favorite machine quilters here in town. I'm afraid that doing the machine quilting myself will make this one of those homemade = cheap kind of projects. Homemade, when it is done right, outstrips any other kind of gift. But when the skills are lacking, it gives homemade a bad name. I know you all know what I mean.

Besides coming up with a plan of attack, I got the bias binding ready for both quilts {I love to do bias binding} and managed to get all those little bitty corners I saved-and-sewed-and-pressed-and-then-sewed-together-with-three-other-corners-to-make-baby-snowballs sewn together into pairs. If you use your imagination and squint a bit, they are starting to look like baby snowballs, right? They're a bit wonky, but they're going on the back along the seam where I sew my two pieces of fabric together. I'm going to add the label in the strip of baby snowballs as well. I had hoped to already have the back finished and ready to go, but everything seems to take me longer than I think. I wonder if it is because I stop and admire my work too much?

Next week, I hope to have a whole snowball quilt to show. The shower is a week from today, so I'd better get busy.