Everyone sounds wonderfully busy. I finished all the black perle cotton #8 bobbin embroidery on my little red quilt. Today I will remove the stabilizer as much as possible and then handwash the piece to remove the rest before I proceed further with the appliques. They sure have had nice weather in Paducah this week. I'm hoping for lots of good pictures.

I have been watching the Paducah posts as well and though I'm so very inspired, I have small children at home and it will be a long time before I can go. I am hoping to make it to the NQA show this year as it is only a few hours away. I am working on another quilt to enter into MQX (with luck, I've never entered a juried competition before) but other than that mostly working on client quilts.

It looks like some of you are getting some good quilting time in. I passed on my chance to go to Paducah 3 years ago partly because there was a grandbaby due about that time. He came 3 weeks early though so I could have worked it in. I believe that was the year of the floods. Every year it seems there is just too much to do. I'm busy getting my country place ready for a quilt retreat the middle of next month so no time for quilting right now. Spring cleaning takes a long time and is way too much work. I do have to hand sew a binding and add hanging sleeves and labels to 2 quilts before the quilt show next week. Hopefully I can get that done this weekend. Then the 1st week of May I have guests coming from Washington state and the 2nd week my niece and her daughter will be visiting from Japan. The daughter won the Japan Times Spelling Bee so they will be in the states for a month. I'm going to be really tired by the time the retreat gets here so am looking forward to some real relaxing quilting time soon after.

Hi Kathy. I used 2.0 straight stitch length and everything else was default settings. However, I took a workshop once where I used many of the decorative stitches with a nice thicker decorative thread, similar to Ricky Tim's Razzle Dazzle, in the bobbin and they all came out looking great. So make yourself a sample practice piece and play away. It's really fun. Be sure to check your machine manual on bobbin thread work.

Good morning! BJ, that is a great idea, working the vines by using the bobbin work technique. I have always wanted to try BW, and this is the push that I needed. I do have a question, what kind of stitch did you use as the stitch length? This will be my project to experiment on Saturday.

But lots of fun.

It would be like the blind leading the blind.

Reetzbobeetz wrote:
I'll remember that when I get the treadle I'm going to work on here...to put my pedometer on my shoe, that is. I told the guy whose machine it is that I needed about a month just to learn to use it before I started the special project. I can hardly wait to tell everyone what this is about, but it will be months before I can. Sigh. Anyway, fun . Perhaps I should come to Ireland and let you show me how to treadle sew.

No Paducah for me either I have been making some place mats for my dining table. I got three done and then ran out of the fabric that I have now decided I want to put in all of them so it's ordered and I have to wait patiently while Cindy at Fluffy Speep Quilting enjoys herself in Paris until Thursday. I want it to be me enjoying myself in Paris until Thursday! So in the meantime I am SIDing the borders on my WotRoTT quilt. I have all the spools and the blocks in between quilted so there is just the borders left to do. I can't believe I have almost finished it. It has felt like the biggest quilting marathon I have done yet. And all done on a mechanical Pfaff Select 4 that doesn't even have needle down and a harp space of about 2"! Okay, so that's an exaggeration it's probably 6". I also spent time this morning trying to FMQ on my Singer 301 treadle machine. That was good fun. Hard to get the stitches even but I plugged away particularly as I have now discovered that if I put my pedometer on my shoe it counts. I did 2000 steps this morning just on the treadle. Now if I could find something quilty that would work on my batwings i would be a very happy quilter.

Renata, your quilts are gorgeous! Make some more.

BJ, the red silk is looking beautiful. I can't wait to see more.

And so it is Renata and nicely, too!!

Renata, hope you continue to have fun. You are doing some wonderful work. Thanks for your comment on my embroidery. It looks kind of wrinkled because it's backed with a fusible wash away stabilizer. I will hand wash it after I get all the black embroidery done before I add the flowers and birds. Red silk may run a lot...won't probably hurt the black threads though. I hope. :shock:

Ritzy, Sorry you may not have any quilty fun this week. Hope you can get to that soon.

Well this girl has to be an adult all week so I don't know if I will get any quilty time in except to check in here. No Paducah for me.

No plans for a longarm machine, BJ! But it's fun to play when I visit with my sister. Love the embroidery on your birds in a tree and glad to know you're having fun.

Marilyn, I know it's almost impossible to see, but my Celtic Solstice quilt is quilted. We
picked a pale peach thread in order not to overwhelm the quilt's strong design features. If you double-click on the image, you'll see the quilting. It's a panto, Celtic Curlz, the same Bonnie Hunter used on her quilt.

Thank you for your kind comments, all. It's nice to be back.

Thanks all y'all.