Photos from the Week

Since starting my Instagram account a few weeks ago, I’ve suddenly found a million excuses to shoot and share photos I probably would never have shared before. Here’s a bit of the news from this week:

Quilter’s Dream Blend quilted with Sharp Stippling

I’m still stitching out batting samples to see exactly how certain batts react after being washed. Before market I’d finished quilting a whole stack of samples, only to realize I needed to stitch more because I hadn’t prewashed the fabric.

Yes, yes, I ALWAYS prewash, but in this one tiny situation with my Spoonflower fabric, I didn’t have time and the pieces were so small that I skipped that step and boy do I regret it! Not only are all my batting tests results a bit skewed by the shrink of the fabric, I also accidently added detergent to the samples I washed, and the fabric faded considerably.

Lesson learned – no detergent when washing Spoonflower fabric!

Note: According to the Spoonflower website, you can use detergent, but it needs to be chlorine free – good luck finding that!

So prewashing fabric can REALLY make a big deal for your quilt’s finished results. So to see how this batting acts with prewashed fabric I’ve been quilting more samples with many different designs.

Flowing Leaves was the perfect choice to quilt over Quilter’s Dream Green! Quilting it this big was a bit of a challenge though because they’re bigger than my hands!

This is Quilter’s Dream Deluxe. I couldn’t decide on a design until I remembered – when it doubt, quilt feathers!

I’ve also been inspired by the landscape we saw coming down the mountains in West Virgina on Monday. Maybe we should have a landscape quilt along next year?!

I’m off to relax on the hammock on this bright spring afternoon. Maybe some hand applique will join me, or maybe someone else!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah