Back to a regular schedule this week.  Feeling better, so I am up and about again.

This sketch of lilacs just starting to open was done yesterday. I thought it was finished but looking at it now I see several things that I want to alter.

I have a hard time letting paintings be done. I hang on to them, fiddling and trying a little bit more every time I look at them. Very little of my work has been signed because I still want to do just a bit here or there.  The hardest part of painting for me is knowing when to stop!

The sketch was done in acrylics on canvas. It is 16×12 inches.

Gift Quilt

I started a quilt for a gift on a special occasion a year ago.  It is still not finished. It needs to be quilted. So yesterday I packed up the material and directions for the Mystery Quilt, Rhododendron Trail, and took out the gift quilt to finish. I am not going to be distracted this time. It is getting finished as quickly as I can do it.

The quilt is queen sized and I am going to quilt it by machine. It is very hard to get a queen sized quilt through the throat of the machine.  The throat is the opening in the sewing machine between the head, where the needle is, and the pillar of the machine. You can see the throat to the right of the needle in the picture below. Imagine trying to slide half of a queen sized quilt through the throat so you can sew in the middle.

I had a real shock when I took a look at the quilt after I brought it out from storage. There were a couple of creases in the backing! This is a very bad thing. There should be no creases.

Now I use a spray adhesive to hold the layers together. I am thinking that fixing it would mean taking the backing right off and redoing the layer – a big job. So I went on line to a couple of quilting groups that I belong to and asked for advice. 90 percent of the responses were that indeed I had to take it apart and redo.  But a couple of people suggested trying to smooth out the creases by pulling apart the layers in just that area, smoothing down the creases by hand, and then ironing to refix the adhesive. It worked!

Now I just have to quilt it and add the binding!