Gulp, here I go. . .I'm so scared

This is my first attempt to quilt on my machine. Well, I have done individual squares. The middle squares of this quilt was quilted individually then I added the edges.

This quilt has been a work in progress since 2006. I started it thinking I would sell it to one of the members of my choir, the Choral Arts Society of Utah, to raise money for our trip to Austria, but when I found out the CASU garage sale money was going to the general choir fund, I decided I couldn't part with it.


Besides when you do something like this, you fall in love. There is no way I was going to part with it. Everyone's signatures in the choir are on it.

I made this whole thing up. I had no idea how to quilt as you go, so I just faked it. After quilting each set of four hearts, I sewed the front squares together, the batting just butting up to one another and overcast. I hand stitched the back together. I'm sure it is not the best way, but it was all I could come up with.

Then came the trial. Put it on the bed. . . It needed many, many, many more hearts. . . or to be made wider. I decided on making borders rather than more hearts, after all, that just hangs down the side. But I was at a loss as to how to add them to the back with the batting.

So it just sat there, in a box. All the coordinating fabrics and batting sat in a roll-away suitcase. I tripped over it all the time.

Finally this month when I decided to join yet another couple of quilt-alongs, I realized I had better just face the music and finish all the ones I had started. There are at least 3 quilts, that I know of.

I sewed the borders on each side of the quilt, inserting batting and butting it up against the center and whip stitching it. 

Now I have finally gotten the borders sewn on and the batting butted up and stitched, I have stretched it onto a frame and pin-basted ready to quilt on my machine. I have been studying how to do this on many blogs and YouTube, but I am still really scared. I guess that is why I have put it off for so long. . .

wish me luck.

On a a different topic, nothing to do with quilting is my latest acquisition. This is a set of dolls my aunt made. The original picture of her and my dad sits beside the porcelain replica. When my step uncle died and the house was cleaned out by my cousin, they called my mom to see if she wanted this set of dolls.

OHMYGOSH! Mom called me and asked me if I wanted them. OF COURSE! I have been fairly green with covetousness ever since I saw them for the first time in her house after she died. I hinted to my step uncle that I would LOVE to own those some day, but he ignored me. I just settled for the fact that I would never see them again. Now they sit on my table with two beautiful doilies given to me yesterday from a friend. Don't they go so well?

I'm a happy camper.

have a nice day, and send good machine quilting thoughts my way. . . gulp

~a