At Last! My Quilt

This quilt has been in the works for over a year, and in my head for much longer. When I started it, I named it Summer Romance I, knowing I also want to design and make a blue and white quilt that I will call Summer Romance II.

I'm now at the quilting stage--and I'd be quilting right this minute if I didn't need electricity and if we weren't having much needed thunderstorms.  (We're getting typical New Mexico three-inch rains--which means the drops of rain are falling about three inches apart.  We hope to do a bit better than that.)

You can find more posts about the making of this quilt top here and hereor just have a look at posts from July 2015.(although I'm pretty sure I started this Memorial Day weekend of 2015).

All but the white fabric in this quilt is from Eleonor Burns' Zoey line for Benartex.

 I'm quilting with several Glide threads from Fil-Tec, also known as Bobbin Central.

 I marked only the spine of all the feathers on this quilt so far.

 I made only general decisions about how I would quilt, so when I actually started, I needed a couple of homemade tools.  I used a piece of card stock to make the flowing spine above for a two inch wide border.

I cut the paper above to make a more unusual spine for the five inch borders.
I used a plastic lid to plot the spines in the outer border at the top of this post.


The main blocks of this quilt were inspired by a Blackford's Beauty quilt I saw in a magazine around 1983.  I've also seen this block called Snowflake, and someone said Bonnie Hunter has designed a quilt using this block. I didn't know that, and I don't think I'll go look at Bonnie's quilt until I'm finished.  In any case, this is now my block in a unique setting with lots of room for the quilting to shine.

I wanted to get this quilt done ages ago, and I was thinking I could finish it this weekend, but since I'm using electricity instead of a treadle to quilt this,  I have to unplug whenever there is danger of lightning in order not to risk a power surge frying my machine.

I did get to spend a lovely morning (or most of it, anyway) at Dough-Re-Mi Bakery & Cafe catching up with a friend and getting an original quilt she'd like me to quilt very soon--as soon as Summer Romance I comes off the machine.

The last time I checked, the Dog Head Fire was at 96% containment, so we no longer have to worry about that, although we continue to pray for the people who did lose homes.  Despite the devastation, there was one family church still standing although everything around it had burned. Another fire started on the other side of the mountain yesterday, about 11 miles from Tajique.

If the stormy stuff continues, I need to go work in my sewing room and, with luck, put those treadles to use!

Happy quiltmaking and knitting,