Unfinished Business

Catching up on posting pictures of my Embroidery Companion Sew Along projects.  First up, April's project, the Karin Curtains.  Both of these panels were completed as of April 30th, however the actual curtain portion of the project has yet to occur as you can see.  That's the reason I've held off sharing is because I wanted to wait and show you a completed set of curtains but alas it's not done yet.  I love how they turned out and I love stitching these.  Many a night was spent curled up watching something on TV and stitching away.  The second panel went a lot quicker than the first and was completed in half the time.  I'm excited for when I'll be able to hang them up in my studio.

 One of these things is not like the other...

(If you can see some of the errors made in these panels, shoot me an email at annette at sunday-special dot net with your guesses by June 12th and I'll have a prize for the winner, or randomly chosen person if there are multiples. Please note the winner will not be announced or notified until the end of June as I will be travelling.)


Now for May a completed quilt top.  It is so colorful.  As you can see I made mine a bit bigger by adding a scrappy border.  Many of the fabrics used were from my scrap bin, stash, and a few were purchased new for the quilt.  I love that some of the fabrics hold special memories for me.  A couple of my favorites include some that came from my Grandma's stash that she gifted me over Christmas.  One in particular is the tulips on a white background which is two below the pig.  Some are from my first quilt that actually still hasn't been finished.  (Sometime soon.)  And that blue and white polka dot next to the ducks was used when I first was starting to relearn embroidery. 

I decided to prequilt the batting and backing together separately as the batting I purchased suggested it be quilted 3 1/2 inches apart.  Whoops!  The quilting is finished but now I'm worried the quilting lines I marked with a dressmaker's chalk are not going to come off.  AHHH!  Oh well no one looks at the back of a quilt right?  Right?  I do still plan on hand quilting the top.  So the backing will look all sorts of interesting with double quilting lines and dressmaker's chalk.

Aside from the quilting lines issue on the backing there are a few more things I would do differently next time.  Use a solid border to highlight the embroidery squares or perhaps use a log cabin style block with the embroidery squares at the center.  I've been hugely inspired recently by the Modern Log Cabin Quilting book and can't wait to try her technique of making log cabin blocks.

Until we meet again... Happy Stitching!