Quilting and cutting.

We cancelled our walk that we'd planned for today because the weather forecast predicted continuous rain but I woke to sun streaming in the window. However it didn't last and soon the rain began, a perfect stitching day. I had some jobs to do before I could get started but this afternoon I was able to settle down to sewing.

I needed to start the quilting on the baby quilt. I'm making this quilt from a pattern that appeared in 'Today's Quilter'. Here's their finished quilt.

You can just about see the quilting which is done in waves. I decided I wanted to do the same quilting, even though my lines are a bit shaky. They gave a full sized template so I printed this out and marked the quilt using my air erasable pen. I fully marked the first line for the first wave and then did dots to mark the following lines. It took a little time to complete the quilting on the first wave but after that it got easier.

Some of the marks have already disappeared but it doesn't matter if they don't as the quilt will have to be washed. I decided not to carry the wave into the border as I wanted to quilt the babies name there. You can see what I mean by shaky lines but they did get better as I got used to the pattern . I still have a lot to do but I stopped before I got too tired.

After a restorative cup of tea I started to attack my scrap collection. I'm planning on making a granny square quilt so I needed to cut the scraps into 2 1/2 squares. It took quite a time but I finished the first batch and had a neat pile of squares and some strings.

I got the next box of scraps ready to iron before cutting but I decided to call it a day.

As I took this picture I became very happy as I spotted my 61/2 square ruler which I'd misplaced a while back. That would have made it easier when I was trimming the 9 patch blocks. I really must keep better track of my rulers in future.

So to finish the day with a little hand stitching. The Christmas tree cross stitch is growing slowly and I like it more as it grows.

Lyndsey