The Lilacs are out!

Our white Lilacs are in full bloom, so  I brought a handful into the house this weekend.
How glorious! the smell.

We are so excited to finally be enjoying the warmer days.
And, along with them, the work in the yard and gardens has begun. 

After quilting, it's time to 'Square-up' the piece.

• Machine baste 1/4" from the edges of the top fabric, to stabilize all the layers. 
• Use both a horizontal and a vertical seam line for alignment with your straight edge. 
• trim only on the right outer edge of your straight edge, turning the quilt to work on all four sides. 

 It's very important to note: if you use the edge of the quilt top fabric to align your straight edge, you are only cutting off the excess fabrics and not 'Squaring-up' your work.

To illustrate, this photo shows that your fabrics sometime shift a little in the quilting process. But 'Squaring-up' helps to correct the alignment of the entire quilt. Adding the binding usually covers most of your 'corrected' areas.

And now for something different . . .

. . . I started quilting 'Watering the Trees' this week. 

I began by stabilizing the piece with some traditional quilting in -the-ditch, 

which quickly progressed to more linear topstiching.  

Then a few days ago, bored with the whole process, I just let go . . .

. . . filling in some of the spaces with stitches as if I were coloring them in with a colored pencil. Scribbling across certain areas with thread. Hmmm??? . . .

We'll see just where this takes me . . .

(To be continued)

'Watering theTrees'

This week, I needed a little 'therapy' piecing after all the violence that has been occurring in the nation.

Sometimes, this is my way of taking my head out of the present moment, to get a break from it all. 

I received this wonderful pattern in a newsletter (I think?) from the American Quilter's Society. 

It's a small tutorial on how to piece abstract representations of trees. Here is a link to the pattern page:

http://www.americanquilter.com/quilt_life/patterns.php

I believe it is from the current June 2013 issue of The Quilt Life magazine  

http://www.americanquilter.com/quilt_life/index.php

by Irene Berry.

It is quick and easy. But, what really attracted me to the article was how Irene starts out by writing about how forgiving this process can be. I thought I'd give it a try.

The other day, I took notice of how the trees across the street from us are looking so thin.

Evergreens do go thru different periods of losing needles and then filling back in again. But, my concern came from the fact that, some time ago, the trees in the back of our yard had also started looking the same way. I think that they are stressed from the changes occurring in our environment. . .

which gives pause for some thought.

And, of course! I had to work this out by sewing my thoughts into a quilt.

What inspires you to create a sewn 'thought'?

What do you think about while you are sewing your quilt?