Monday, October 24, 2022

Tuesday ToDo #53

This was one of my most productive weeks in a long time. Most days this past week I started quilting after breakfast and then worked on quilt projects until it was time for bed. I think I only spent one evening watching some TV with my husband.

Paducah Log Cabin in Morris Fabrics. Designed by Judy Martin
from her Extraordinary Log Cabin Quilts book.

I spent a whole day cutting out the pieces to finish the Paducah Log Cabin.

And then I spent several days slowly building the strips for the Paducah Log Cabin block.

By Sunday evening I had all of the strips ready to finish the quilt. The pieces along the left side are all the strips for building the central quilt blocks. The pieces along the right side are all the strips for the border blocks.

Now I can just sit down for a couple of days and finish assembling these units. I am hopeful I'll be able to finish this quilt in the coming week. My one monthly goal is to finish it entirely by the end of the month, so I don't have much time left.

Also, since I finally had a plan for how to quilt it, I put my Snake River Log Cabin on the long arm and got started.


It turned out that working on this was really compatible with sewing all these strips. I would set the area for the block, align the pantograph, start the long arm stitching, and then I could return to my sewing machine or ironing board for the several minutes of time I needed to fill. I spent all weekend doing this.

I have nearly finished quilting it. I have done all of the central blocks and the top and bottom borders, but I need to rotate it on my long arm to do the side borders. Unfortunately, I made the backing for this quilt before I had the long arm so it isn't quite oversized enough to make it easy to put it on the long arm; I think I'll have to sew on a strip of muslin to add a few inches, but it can wait until after I finish these Paducah blocks.

In the next week, I hope to finish the Paducah Log Cabin quilt. It is my one monthly goal to finish it, so I am going to focus exclusively on it until it is done. Luckily, I have already figured out the quilting plan so that part should be able to get started as soon as I finish the quilt. I don't really know how quickly the pantographs will stitch up, but it may potentially take more than a day to do all the quilting.

I may spend my Halloween sewing on binding. LOL

Thanks to Linda for hosting the ToDo Tuesday linkup.

10 comments:

  1. The quilting on Snake River looks really good. It's nice that you're able to sew while the machine quilts. When the Snake River quilting is completed, so can quilt Paducah Log cabin. Happy stitching!

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    1. I definitely love my computer on the long arm. I know it isn't as precise as the ladies who are really skilled with ruler work and free motion quilting, but I am satisfied with my less-than-perfect results from programmed pantographs.

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  2. Don’t you love those productive weeks? The quilting is looking really nice on the Snake River log cabin quilt.

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    1. Thanks so much. It's not perfect but I have learned a lot. Hopefully I'll be able to take those lessons and apply them to the Paducah log cabin.

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  3. I'm glad you posted a photo of the Paducah Log Cabin block by itself - it's interesting to see the original block and the pattern all of them make together. What pretty quilting on Snake River! When my backing isn't long enough on the long arm, I attach a piece of fabric by safety pins and then clamp it to the ends. Thank you for sharing with To Do Tuesday!

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    1. Thanks for the tip about attaching a piece of fabric with safety pins. I may try that.

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  4. Both quilts are going to be stunners!

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  5. So productive! Beautiful quilts! Question, does the heavy quilting change the feel of the quilt?

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    1. I thought I might not like how much quilting was on there, but I like it. It does give it a little more substance, by that I mean it doesn't flop as much as quilts with less quilting, but that could also be that I used thicker batting than I normally do. Now that it's finished, I've laid it on the bed and I quite like it. I guess now that I have the long arm, I don't mind using more complicated pantographs. LOL

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