Summer Romance I Quilting: Corners

Yesterday I stopped and fiddled in my sketchbook to decide what to do in the corners.

These were both possibilities.

However, I do like to draw spines into the quilt, and I knew my blue and purple markers were almost dry, and Busy Bee Quilts was having a 25% off sale on everything if I got there before ten.  They were out of blue markers, but one of my favorite clerks talked me into buying Frixion markers--which I've been terrified to use.  She told me that if I got them and didn't like them, she'd buy them back from me.  So I bought a package, came home, wrote all over a white scrap and watched in amazement as it disappeared in seconds with heat from the hair dryer.  Okay, I was willing to try it on the quilt (and am hoping it will never reappear, although I do launder my quilts). Yes, I have friends who swear by them, but I was still skeptical.


Of course, when I actually stood in front of my quilt, I changed my mind about how to quilt it.
Quilts do have a way of speaking about what they want.

These large corners are going to feature what I sometimes call the Oklahoma Seed Pod, which is the larger portion of the photo above.  I call it that because I've only seen it on one other quilt (except for mine), and that was made in 1903 in the Oklahoma Panhandle.  I traced the design sometime around 1986 and love to use it and a few of its variations in my quilts.

For some reason, I was really struggling with the quilting today; then it occurred to me that I had invested in Hartley Micro-handles, so they went on the machine, and I'm doing better now--although I still seem to be doing sub-par work for me.  Nevertheless, after I take this break, I'm going to get back to work.

I'm also very unhappy with how much my starts and stops show up, so I'm going to start tying off and burying my knots--which will be pretty easy and fast for me after several decades of hand quilting, but will take more time than anchoring by machine.

Before my daughter left for her manicure and a few hours with her best friend, she came into the quilting studio to tell me goodbye, and asked, "Is that quilt for us?"  Yes, it will be part of her inheritance, but I hope to sleep under it for several decades first.

Happy quiltmaking and knitting,...


P.S.: I'm getting some lovely comments from no-reply commenters (is that a word?) to which I cannot respond.  So if you are a no-reply commenter (you might want to check your profile to be sure you have it set the way you want it set), please know I'm not being unappreciative or ugly about what you have to say.

Post Post Script:  Yes, I'm still quite nervous about the Frixion pens, but if white lines appear, they will at least be white lines on white fabric.