Wednesday, March 24, 2010

The Camera Doesn't Lie

Oh, sure it does! When you look at these pictures, you can't tell if the room is a mess or straight out of Better Homes and Gardens. In fact, you can't tell if my home is really in a hollow tree or an alien ship orbiting Earth and looking for signs of intelligent craftwork. But wait. That also applies to you. I don't know if you're even human or possibly some exotic mix of gorilla and butterfly. A gorillerfly. Butterilla? I gotta get my mind back.
I pinned these two quilts in preparation for actually quilting them.
Definition
Quilting, if you don't know, is the action of attaching a quilt top, fluffy stuff in the middle, and back together. Usually a sewing machine is used for this, but hand-quilting is highly respected. Also, there's something called a tied quilt. In this case the quilting is done with small bits of yarn, cording, thread, or very flexible pasta* that simply goes through the quilt and back up and is then tied. Many quilters will actually pay to have their quilt machine-quilted. This is referred to as credit card quilting. I have credit card quilted my three largest quilts as Molly, talented as she is, simply isn't big enough for some things.
Miss Running Water, my Dream Dancer, has made some progress. I believe that everything except her skirt and feet and some little background do-hickeys (that's a technical term) has been cross-stitched. Backstitching is still needed for almost the whole picture.
*Quilting with pasta is not recommended for quilts that you expect to ever wash as it is biodegradable and will disintegrate. Cooking with pasta, on the other hand, can go over quite well.

2 comments:

swooze said...

Love the quilts and cross stitch! Thanks for sharing.

Free Range Chick said...

I used to make tied quilts for migration families as a charity when I was back in high school. I kinda want to make a real quilt, when ever I find the time to learn how to. I have a friend that owns her own quilting machine that I will be using though. I've never seen it done on a sewing machine though.