I'm not getting far on finishing my latest project. I was piecing a checkerboard border to use up all the leftovers, a task which kept me busy for quite a while. Keryn came round and I was laying it out on the bed to show her, getting more and more uneasy about the whole thing.
One look at her face confirmed my fears;- the border wasn't doing a thing for the rest of the top. Sigh. It needs a couple of plain borders, so the checkerbord strips will go into another project, and I'll start hunting out some fabric to make new borders.Only a few precious hours wasted....

This is a customer quilt, and the backing was a lovely rose coloured batik. It felt very firm, quite stiff in fact, so I washed it and even put fabric softener with it. I loaded it on the machine and quilted a little sample but was horrified to hear the needle popping loudly at every stitch. I tried smaller needles, less tension on the back- nothing seemed to work and there were noticeable holes where the stitches were. Some people say that these close up the first time it's washed, but I just wasn't happy doing this on the longarm.

So I did it on my Janome 6500 instead, with a fine ball point needle and using basting spray because safety pins marked the backing as well. It took me longer and made me remember quilting muscles I hadn't used in a while but it turned out nice. It was only a single bed size, or I wouldn't have attempted it, I think I'm quite over pushing big quilts through a domestic machine.
I do quite like keeping the old skills tuned, I just wouldn't want to be doing it for every customer quilt!! The weather has been very warm and spring-like so Matt has been hiking at Bowman's Park, taking photos again. This old dead tree stump took his fancy, but when he was looking at the image on the computer, look what he found....
Ugh!!! Little gremlin faces!