Quilting: What's Your Season?

I think for most people the season for quilting is winter. I seem to run on a different clock: summer is the time for me. (Ok, we're not really full into summer yet, but the woodstove has been retired for the season and that's close enough for me.)

In any case, I have been doing more quilting lately than I usually do. A week or two ago I made some more Big T blocks:

Last time I wrote about them, I had only five blocks and in two sessions, I managed to double that! I do two at a time now which makes things a little more efficient without being too overwhelming for me to keep track of.

I'm still enjoying picking out which fabrics to put together. So far I haven't repeated any combinations but I definitely have favourites. The blocks are still pinned to my window blind and I like being able to see them all the time!

Today I pulled the Kaffe Fasset quilt again. You may recall that I had run out of red thread. I bought a spool when I was at the store for something else but had to guess at the colour because I was unprepared. I bought the wrong colour. I managed to exchange it a week later. After all that, I thought I had better at least make some progress!

The three pieces of the quilt are all at different stages. The furthest along has all the circles done, all the red squares done and the yellow squares started. The next one has all the circles done. And the final one doesn't even have the circles done (that's where I ran out of red thread).

I decided that I needed some "no brain" quilting, so I picked up the third one and threaded the machine with my new red thread to finish sewing the circles. I was surprised that I couldn't find a red bobbin to match. How could I have run out of thread on the bobbin and spool at the same time? Even though the question occurred to me, I didn't stop to consider it any further and just started sewing.

The back of a block I did today,
with the proper blue thread.

After I finished the first section, I realized that the reason I didn't have a red bobbin was because the bobbin thread was not supposed to match; it was supposed to be blue. ::sigh::

So I did a little ripping out. When I wanted "no brain" quilting, this wasn't really what I had in mind.

After ripping, I did get that section finished and now all three pieces have at least the circles sewn.

While I had the red threaded in the machine, I figured I would continue with it. I sewed two red blocks with free motion quilting before running out of time and desire.

Thankfully, my machine has been behaving while I've been doing free motion quilting. I think the sharp needle, slowing down and cleaning out the lint formula is working.

Besides the changing of the season, I may have also been inspired to quilt by "feng shui"ing my living room. My sewing table is now in front of a window and has more convenient access to the ironing board.

The whole room feels more open the way it is arranged. I hope it leads to lots of sewing!