Just Quilting the Quilt, continued!

More quilting on the diagonal lines

I did not abandon this project! I just got busy and didn't contiune to blog about it!! I figured I'd better get back at it. I spent, probably, four evenings downstairs in the quilt studio. I would work for about an hour, wonder if I was making any headway and I then would take some photos.

See the LED flashlight, that I have in my left hand? Shows off the quilting some slick!

 This is the LED flashlight that I used to light the quilting so that it popped a bit, I also used it when I was quilting the patches of beige that very closely matched my beige thread... I just held it in my left hand, sort of stuck out to the side of Big Martha, so that the stitching showed and I could see where I had been.

Lobster claw!! See it?

 The easiest spot to quilt were the two short borders! The brown fabric made the stitching easy to see - no fooling around with the flashlight here!!

The long border at the top. Sailboats!!

 I forgot to take a photo of more of the sailboats on the long border. I was worried about how I was going to quilt the sailboats upside down. But what I decided to do was this. When I finished quilting all of the quilt except for the long border that I had placed on the frame closest to where I was standing, I pinned that edge to the backing and batting to within an inch of its life (I even asked it how tall it was!) and then, I simply removed the whole quilt from the frame, rotated it 180 degrees, and put it back on with the unfinished edge where I could quilt the boats on with the water oriented toward the center of the quilt. I contemplated quilting them with the water towards the outside (which would have meant that I would not have had to rotate the quilt - which can lead to puckers, not to be undertaken lightly!) but I decided that that would not be quite consistent enough for me... (Everyone has their limits - evidentally that one was mine! Who knew!)

More seashells and sand dollars

I decided those swirls looked like shells seen from the top!

Every once in while I would pause for inspiration.

 I have a bottle of seashells upstairs and I spent some time drawing them, orienting them in different directions. I liked some better than others. I did A LOT of doodling for this quilt!

Finally, the quilting was done. DH held it up for a photo.

The back. My camera did not like taking photos of the back

After all the quilting was done, I trimmed the quilt and put the binding on. I LOVE binding - but I wanted to have something to work on by hand while visiting my Dad. He lives in a Long Term Care Facility, and I visit him 6 days a week... It is important to have something to show him and something to do! He loves this quilt.

Binding is ON there, hand sewing left to do.

I managed to leave it for one day, started binding it during the visit the following day and finished it that evening. I just could stand the suspense of seeing it completed!

On my bed, letting natural sunlight show off the quilting!

Another week passed (one in which I started and finished another quilt!) and I finally got around to putting this quilt on my bed to see how it would photograph in the natural light from the window.
I'm pretty tickled with how it came out!

Close up!

 And I'm loving the way the details show!

Close up of the border

Seashells, star fish, lobster claws, sand dollars and an occasional anchor. What more could you ask for?

Well, I will tell you. I found this quilting to be quite daunting. After all these are things that we know how they SHOULD look. And I found the beige diagonals to be a bit tricky to get quilted. I have a bit of a quirky sense of humour. So I will now tell you a story.

I was a Trex Guider in the early 2000s and we decided to take our girls on a white water kayaking course on the Ottawa River. I am a tall woman and I weighed 50 pounds more than I weigh now. The people who were running the course were not prepared for a lady of my height and weight and they had to disassemble the inside of the kayak in order for me to fit in it.

The first part of the course was to do a 'wet escape' from the kayak. This involved flipping the kayak upside down under controlled conditions and then safely getting out of it, and in the case of the drill, standing up beside it. We were supposed to tap the bottom of the kayak three times while we were upside down, to show that we were in control and then pop out. Because I was one of the adults, I thought that I should go first, and one of the other adults elected to do so, as well.

I would like to make a note here: I swim like a fish. I have no fear of the water, although I do have a healthy respect for it, I held my canoe trip leader certificate and I am a certified scuba diver.

I turned my kayak upside down - and then I was standing up beside it. Fastest wet escape the instructor had ever seen. Evidentally, when I was upside down, I remembered how stuffed into that little plastic kayak I had been, and my body decided we'd better see if we could even get out at all - let alone knock three times on the bottom first.

What does this have to do with the quilt, and a joke, you ask? Well. After I got myself right side up and realized that I WAS indeed going to be able to get out of the kayak, I sort of took inventory... And I realized I was missing something. My good sunglasses! And although we were only in waist deep water, the sunglasses NEVER reappeared. I figure, in the ensuing 15 or 16 years they must have worked their way to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. So my sunglasses are quilted into the quilt.

My lost sunglasses

I hope you have enjoyed this story and the glimpse of Mo's Mystery Quilt. I will be gifting this to a man who loves and misses the ocean.

Until next time,
Yours in Quilting
Jane