Progress On The Scrappy Grandmother's Flower Garden

    Row 5 has been attached to the quilt top and I have 2 more rows to make.

    I wanted to share a picture of my crazy boy cat, Merlin.  In order to get the maximum amount of sunshine in the dining room for my little dog, I take my dining room curtains and fold them up onto a microwave cart that I use to store cookbooks and extra silverware.  Merlin has decided that this is his place to take a bath and a nap.  He has been using this spot for the last few days.

Preparing To Make Two More Quilt Tops

     Today I took some time to cut fabric from two more quilt tops.  I don't have a chevron quilt or pinwheel quilt and I love to make quilts with half square triangles.

    I'm making my chevron quilt with 5" squares cut from these bright colored fat quarters I had in my stash.  These are from the Free Spirit Collection I bought from Craftsy earlier this year.  I love the bright colors and I think they will make an awesome chevron quilt.

   I bought two sets of 100 - 5" white charms from an etsy seller.   I usually cut up my own yardage for projects but I didn't feel like it this time and took the easy way out.

   The other quilt will be a pinwheel quilt.  I've made three pinwheel quilts and they were all made with lots of fabrics so they looked old fashioned.  I gave all three of those away to family members so it's time for me to have one of my own.  Here is a picture of my very first quilt made with half square triangles.

    My pinwheel quilt will be made with two charm packs of Union Blues by Barbara Brackman for Moda and one of the pack of 100 - 5" white charms I bought already cut.  I love the Civil War reproduction fabrics and these will be fun to work with.

   With my fabric cut all I have to do is start sewing.

Testing, 1, 2, 3, Testing

    I bought a brand new walking foot for my Bernina 1530 a few weeks ago and I'm just getting around to testing it.  I want to use the walking foot on the Bernina to straight quilt my Pretty In Pink quilt when I get my batt.  Here is a picture the pretty little walking foot installed on my machine and a picture of my the front and the back of the sample I just stitched.  It's perfect.

   One note about the walking foot and why I wanted to test it.  Last year I bought an off brand walking foot for my Bernina 1530 from an ebay seller.  I was saving over $100.00 and I thought it would be fine.  The motion of the off brand walking foot was not smooth and although the stitches made using the foot were fine, I wasn't happy with how the machine was running.  So I had some extra money a couple of weeks ago and decided to spring for a Bernina brand walking foot.  I am so glad I did.  There is a world of difference in the two walking feet, the Bernina brand foot runs smoothly and you can see how even the stitches are on both sides.  I'm glad I bought it.  I do a lot of straight line quilting and will probably get a lot of use out of this beauty.  

   One other test I did was to make a 5 Minute Block (the pattern is from Suzanne McNeill).  I'm thinking about using this block for a scrappy Christmas quilt, but I couldn't decide if I would like making it, so I had to try it.  Still not sure about it.  But here is my test block.  It was a fun block to make, I probably need more contrast in my fabrics.