Sprial Quilting

The quilt with the giant spiral on it was all finished last weekend, and binding added.  I LOVE it, and am thinking I will now do a "SERIES".  A bunch of quilts, all SPIRAL QUILTED.  Cuz I am that much in love with it!  In fact, I'm gonna marry it! (Thank you, Pee Wee Herman!)

Binding on, clipped, ready for hand-stitching

The center---gorgeous swirl, right?

I owe my beautiful center swirl to Kerry, she has a great PDF file for the center.  As I said last blog, I print it on lightweight paper (onionskin), pin to where I want my spiral to start, and stitch thru the paper, with short stiches.  After that, I followed my walking foot at half-inch-ish.  A technical term, indicating it's free-form, and not always a half-inch.  And yes, I'm good with that.

And last Sunday when it was finished, Mother Nature gave me a beautiful sunny day (while the Eastern United States was drowning in snow!) and I was able to take the quilt outside for a photo. My second quilt finish of 2016!   It's 48" X 60" & destined for my living room wall (alternating with others).

Remember the wonky baskets from last week?  Well those were all pieced together!  They are now a top, ready for basting.  I pieced together the backing, so all I need to do is go spray-baste on the extra design wall in the basement.  There was a brief period of time where I though I'd push to get it done by tomorrow, January 31st, but it was not to be.  The week ahead doesn't look too crazy, so I should be working on quilting it.

I did some more fussy cutting, after putting a new blade in my rotary cutter---isn't that always an awesome experience???  and you can't figure out why you didn't do it sooner!!

I also spent quite a number of hours cleaning out stuff in the basement.  I'm trying to de-clutter.  You know they say you spend the first half of your life collecting things, and 2nd half getting rid of them? Well, I'm in the 2nd half.  Made some great progress, but still lots more work ahead.

Oh!  And before I sign off for now, did I mention I was featured on January 25th (Monday) on The Name Game? 

I was so excited when I saw that Live a Colorful Life (Cindy) had issued the call for bloggers to tell the story of their names.  She did a lovely job and I thank her so much for featuring me & the story of Chasing Squirrels!   I feel so honored to be among that incredible list of names, found here.

Since I told the story of Chasing Squirrels, I think it's only fitting to finish with this.  And have a great week---get into the studio, friends--SEW!