Here is our pretty glamour shot. So many people came up to me and said they loved the kitty. This is great because I have really been wanting to do more realistic animals/plants/portraits in quilts. I have bought numerous books on this topic and it's great to know I'm headed in the right direction. I can't wait to make more.
Overall this quilt was a real challenge for me. On the quilting, I decided to not rip out all my work but instead just rip out a few of of worst bulges and smooth them over. While it's still not very good, it's at least passable when you look at it from afar (someone at the meeting asked me if I had used a longarm! Hah!)
Of course the troubles didn't end with the quilting. I went to iron out my frixion pen markings, set the iron on a really low setting, but it wasn't hot enough. So I cranked up the heat and out of nowhere the iron got gunk all over and stained my top!
I thought I had melted the mono thread but after talking to many other quilters I do not believe that was the case. I am honestly unsure what caused this. Perhaps some rogue fusible web or spray baste?
There's a shot of the stain. As you can see, it somewhat blended in with the grey of the background! It turns out a tide pen worked to get rid of it. (How DO those things work???) More disappointing, I forgot I was using a scrap of polyester batting and the heat from my iron permanently flattened the center area. I love the loft of polyester but it's too hard to try to remember not to iron it!
But in the end it all turned out alright...or at least well enough. I learned a lot of lessons from this challenge I am glad I participated.
In other news, my sewing area, which used to look like this...
...now looks like this!
We have become proud first-time homeowners and are currently in the moving process.
Wish us luck! I get an entire bedroom to myself for sewing! It's the second story window you see in the upper corner of this pic :)
