Merry Christmas!!!

It's been a little while since I had a chance to post.  I haven't had much quilting going on except sewing the binding on my disappearing four patch quilt from my Lotto winnings earlier this year.  I hate sewing binding.  I hand stitch it to finish it off and it takes absolutely forever!  But I don't know a faster way that turns out as nice so hand stitch it is.

But I thought I'd share pictures of what I have been up to... Christmas!!!  

Merry Everything and Happy Always!!!

  -Andrew

Curved Rails & Curved Quilting

So I won the  BlockLotto for the second time in September.  I won 48 wonderful batik blocks!  I've gotten the top pieced and am working on deciding about the quilting.  It is against my nature to show an unfinished project. But since the whole point of this blog is to share the "evolution" of my process, I'm going to show you what I'm up to.  Here is the pieced top:

I hope it is apparent (since I worried over it forever :) that I arranged the blocks so that the top of one block is in at least the same color group (if not the same color) as the bottom of the block above it and the corner pieces in the sashing.  It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  It was suprising to find that I didn't have an odd piece out.  Not every match up is perfect, but they really are all in the same color groups.  I was pretty impressed with myself! 

So now on to the quilting.  I'm learning free motion quilting.  So I made a set of 3 blocks to practice a few things before I try it on the actual quilt.  Tell me what you think.

As you can see I haven't hidden any of my loose ends yet.

I'm also trying to decide whether to take the pebbles (that's what I call them anyway) right to the seam or just an 1/8 of an inch away.

What do you think?

Here's a close-up of the front.

And here are some pictures of the back.

My curves are still a little jerky, but I'm getting there!

So leave me a note and let me know what you think.  Seeing these close-up pictures of my quilting just encourages me to practice, practice, practice.  There's loads of room for improvement!  I'll try and keep things up to date as I continue with this one.  If you have any suggestions, let me know!