Jubilee Tribute - One Stitch at a Time

I thought it was time for a Jubilee Quilt update.  Just wanted you to know that in between all the Pickle Dish blocks, I am still working on this.  After weeks and weeks of marking, hand quilting, ripping out, re-marking and then hand quilting again, I think I'm finally on the right path.  I think my quilt was not quite square to begin with and that was where my problems were coming from.

I started out by first outline quilting all the vines, leaves and berries.

Next I outline quilted the coxcomb flowers and their leaves.  Then I was finally ready for the cross hatching.  I started out by using my 6" x 24" ruler, drawing lines 6" apart.

Then I came back and drew in 3" lines.  When those were finished, I started quilting the 1 1/2" lines. Here (in the picture above) you can see the pins I use to stabilize the quilting area (as I don't quilt in a hoop).  It's actually going pretty fast now.  And it's starting to give me a glimpse of what's going to happen very, very soon :).

The rectangle areas are where I've quilted across in 1 1/2" rows but there are still 3" rows going the other way.  It's a good thing I REALLY enjoy hand quilting otherwise I think I would be in serious trouble about now.

This is a picture of where I was last weekend.  My sister and I flew from Florida to Albany, NY and then drove from there to a cabin at Great Sacandaga Lake in the Adirondack Mountains.  We met childhood friends and spent a very special time re-connecting.  This was taken as we were walking across the new lake bridge on a glorious fall day.  Priceless memories...

As I've said before, I am blessed.

Karen

My Technique for Pickle Dish

Well, after much ripping out and trying again, I think I have my technique down for making these blocks.  They are different from the standard DWR block construction so it's been a lot of trial and error.

First, sew one arc to the melon piece.  I found I didn't need to clip at this step (usually).

Then sew a corner piece to the top side of the arc.  I did clip this corner piece.  I also re-drafted another corner template making it a little bigger so I could trim to size.  For some reason, the first blocks always came up too small using the original corner template.  One problem solved. :)

So this is what one half of the block looks like,  I press at every step.

Then sew a corner to the 2nd arc. Again, clip this piece.

Sew 2 corner squares on (these I also cut slightly larger than the original).

Then sew the 2nd arc to the melon.  It kind of bothered me that it looks so wrong, but after trimming, it was perfect.

Here is the trimmed block.  Notice the corner piece on the left sits on top of the corner square.  That was another thing I changed, I didn't like it on top.  So now the arcs are both under the corner square.

Here are the only ones I have left to make.  Yay!! Now that I know what I'm doing, it's not bad.  But this is still not my favorite step.  I'll be glad to move on.

And here's my craziness at the moment.  I'm sure this will get tweaked many times before the final version.

Looking forward to that for sure!  Then it will be on to trying to figure out how to quilt it!!

 

Have a great day,

Karen

In a Pickle

I am making headway in my Pickle Dish project... slowly figuring out what I want to do.  My problem is this, I'm not sure of the sequence of piecing these blocks.  I am still having problems with the outside corner pieces.

The melon piece is going together well, I'm just not sure if I should add the corner piece before I sew the unit to the melon.  I've done it both ways, neither feels terribly right to me.

This is one of the drawbacks to drafting it on EQ7.  I have made the outside corner a little bigger and that helped some.  I'm thinking of making it a little bigger still - there is still a puckering when I try to press the corner out.

  I am kind of liking where this is going, but I am really frustrated with the sewing process.  Any suggestions???  Thanks for listening :).

Karen