Machine quilting

The biggest news around here is that we got a supply of kerosene yesterday! Yeah! I could have hugged the delivery man! Wouldn't that have been a surprise! No more cold days and nights (though, this morning we didn't even turn on the heater, we are so used to just huddling in the kotatsu.) So I no longer have to worry about cold. Gasoline is available. Blackouts are still scheduled but more often than not the government decides at the last moment to cancel them. Even the aftershocks are getting milder!

I hope in this return to normalcy I won't forget that there are still 10s of thousands of people without homes, without necessities, without family members. There are still people fighting with their lives to right the problems in the nuclear plant. My joy of a convenient life is tempered by thoughts of others far away.

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I spent the day quilting yesterday, trying to free up space and safety pins for the string quilts. These pictures are mostly for Lorraine. The day before the earthquake she and I discussed the possibilities for machine quilting my Alphabet Soup quilt. Lorraine has done some beautiful machine quilting and I wanted her advice. She approved of my feathers but I was stuck as to what else to do. Together we worked out a small design for the small orange/red blocks. This turned out nicely I think.

I'm afraid I chickened out though on artistic quilting in the larger blocks. I'd thrown around the idea of quilting trees and birds and grape vines (I saw a beautifully machine quilted quilt last year with ART quilted in... but that may have been done by a professional long-armer anyway). I feel most comfortable quilting inside small spaces... even meandering has me befuddled, so I made little "flowers" in some of the 4 inch blocks. It draws away from the pretty batik but the other quilting doesn't really show much so I guess it's okay. I hope Lorraine approves.

I've finished quilting flowers and chains and flowers in two of the quarters so far. I'm hoping I don't have to add any more quilting in between those. At some point the quarters will need to be put together, and quilted... And then I'll need to figure out what to do on the border... This still has a long way to go...