New Year's Resolution 1

Around February or March, I made a New Year's resolution regarding my quilt work. I made a list of all of the techniques I would like to learn or improve and resolved to make a series of small quilts that used the different techniques. The quilts have to be based on my favorite fruits and vegetables and have to use at least one new technique and one technique that I need to practice. So far, this has been a pretty good resolution. Picking a theme frees me from worrying about a design. The small size makes the quilts easier to actually get finished. I guess that's the trick to resolutions. You have to set yourself up for success by setting small goals you can actually achieve. So here is the first quilt. It is called Dawn of the Kiwifruit. Yes, those are my son's hands in the picture. It is machine paper pieced and the curved piecing is done by hand. I do all of my curved piecing by hand. It is machine quilted and hand quilted with this funky metallic floss. It is hand beaded and bejewelled. The new skills I tried were drafting my own New York Beauty Block, using a metallic thread, and using the bejewler. The skills I practiced were free motion quilting and binding. I also got in some practice in on the foundation piecing.

So what did I learn? First, I really dig that bejewler. I would bejewel EVERYTHING if it was socially acceptable. You have to be careful to put the jewels where you want them though. If you slip and put them in the wrong place, it is next to impossible to pry them up and put them back in the right spot. Ask me how I know. I also liked drafting the wonky New York Beauty Block. I really like NY Beauties. I was also pretty happy with the machine quilting. I have a long way to go, but this one is light years better than the last thing I tried to machine quilt. The back of my last machine quilted piece looked like a nest built by a drunken, near sighted bird. There were NO threads tangles on the back of the kiwifruit quilt. Woo hoo! I have to give Alex Anderson props for that. I could actually understand her book on machine quilting and the pictures were great too. Maybe it clicked this time because she is a lefty hand quilter like me. The quilting on the kiwi is not going to win any awards, but I was jazzed at how the meander quilting came out since this was the first time I tried meander quilting.

I still hate binding.

And if you're wondering why it took me until March to made a New Year's resolution, I think the subhead tells you everything you need to know.