Making headway

I hope you all had a fun weekend and enjoyed the extra hour. I slept through the 'fall back' and it was great!
Things are moving along with quilting and repairs. I finished another repair job and need to do  the hand sewing of the binding before giving it a wash and getting it home to the customer. Here's where it started...

Innocuous looking, but covered with seams that popped open. I put a safety pin in everywhere it needed repair. 

I wish you could feel how soft this quilt is from years of gentle use.

The fabrics are in very nice condition.

It only needed a good dose of TLC.

It had the back folded to the front for binding. I took it apart and carefully trimmed it off.

When I finished that, I made new binding and got it sewn on by the end of the day. I'll show you some 'after' pictures when it's done. This picture shows the wear on the edge.

Christmas is in the air here, and I had this quilt to do for a gift. The maker's husband is the recipient. Her backing was way too small, and she opted to use fabric I had in my stash to do the job instead of the plaid flannel she brought with her. In the end she was very pleased with the quilt.

I also had to remove the eyes and buttons from the snowmen and re-attach them when the quilting was done. Note to customers; save the embellishments until after the quilting is completed.

Panto: Let it snow

I had five yards of this Christmas candy fabric in my stash. It matches well!

Next I worked on another too small backing (ironically, another Christmas quilt) and had it loaded and going in a jiffy. Unfortunately, the quilt maker had misaligned fabrics on a seam, leaving it open, and the hopping foot got completely wedged in the hole. It took almost half an hour to free it and left a 1/2 inch hole in the quilt. This happened on the first row! Every row after that I checked every seam to be sure they were sewn shut. When I finished the quilting, I carefully repaired the hole with patches on the front and back. Did not make me a happy camper...

Here is the finished quilt.

The quilt maker's husband builds hot-rods, and she found this hot-rod Santa fabric for the project.

Panto: Let it snow. I've used this a lot lately!

I added 8 inches to the width and six inches to the length to have the backing fit. It is the snowman fabric seen in the top left of the picture. Another of my stash finds.

This patch was as close as I could get to the original reindeer fabric color. She can change it if she has more of the fabric at home.

For the other patch, I used a bit of the leftover fabric after trimming to fussy cut and match where the hole is. Can you spot it? Look closely at the horse...

This quilt was already hand quilted and bound, but the customer asked if I could add more quilting. The original quilter only did echo quilting very close to the appliquéd elements and next to all the seams. The quilt maker wanted feathers in the backgrounds on the flowering vines. Voila! Another finish.

Here is the completed quilting.

Lots of feathers, just as she desired.

Her applique is exquisite.

I also took some time to get the circle edges turned and the applique done on the black and red quilt. The blocks are sewn into rows but I haven't had time to get the rows together. I'm a bit disappointed the little red strips don't line up perfectly, but not enough to take them all apart and try again.

Little by little, it's getting there.

I left the studio at six o'clock to get supper going. I loaded this pretty quilt and have two rows done. It is a good head start on the work to be done tomorrow!