Old and New Projects

Started quilting on this miniature auction wall hanging for our guild the other day and this is all the farther I have gotten. Need to come up with a design for the navy blue borders yet. Can't think of what design to use so it will just sit for a while until I get an inspiration.

I have been wondering for sometime how small I could go to do fusible applique with buttonholed edges. Yesterday I started experimenting with a pattern called Fragrant Memories from this book by Cynthia Tomaszewski.

The pretty tulip block in the book is 9" and I reduced it on the copy machine to 3". It wasn't as good a copy or the exact size I wanted so I decided to scan a 9" copy into my computer and traced it into EQ6 as an applique pattern. I now can print this pattern any size I want. I printed the block as a 2" block and it was really cute. Traced the pattern onto fusible, ironed it to my background square and started stitching.

You can get an idea of how small the tulip is by the bobbin sitting beside it. Chose to use silk thread on both the top and bottom of the buttonhole stitch. The next photo shows the front of my machine and shows that the buttonhole stitch is #1329 on my Bernina 730 and width is 1.2 and the stitch length is 1.2. This is the size I stitched around all the pieces.

It is such a small stitch I put the strongest magnifying lens on the machine to be able to see where I was working. Worked like a charm but I do have to make sure I keep the straight stitching right beside the edge of the applique so it doesn't show.

I didn't know for sure what to do with the tail starts and ends of each line of stitching. My solution was to pull both threads to the back and tie a couple square knots and clip the tails. Thought with silk thread the stitching might come undone more easily than cotton thread.

Here is the finished mini tulip block. I had some red silk thread but didn't have any of the blue green shade so used a med. grey. The grey thread looks better in person than on the photos.

The one part that I thought really didn't work was the very thin stem. The buttonhole stitches overlapped each other. Went back into my EQ6 file and changed the width of the stem and printed a pattern to try. Just did the stem and played with the buttonhole stitch on part of it and do like the wider width better. You can tell that there is a buttonhole stitch on either side on the second example but the first one just looks like I zig-zagged over the stem.

Am thinking of making at least 4 of the tiny blocks and make another small wall hanging for our guild's auction in April.

After Christmas I was looking at projects I had started or never finished and the Grandmother's Flower Garden miniature kept calling my name. I had started hand quilting it quite a while ago then it got put aside for other projects and never worked on since. I have been working on it for a little while each night now and don't have it half quilted yet but am making progress.

I am hand quilting it and it just takes a while as the hexagons are only about 1/2" across and I am doing quite a bit of quilting on it. Quilting through those seams is sure not fun! Most of the time I can only take one stitch at a time. I figure every stitch I put in is one less stitch to go - right?

My fingers are gradually getting the callouses back and are not getting so sore. I had not hand quilted for so long my fingers were pretty tender at first.

Happy Quilting,

Lynn