Purple Haze

Whew!

I made an honest attempt to finish this one before Ride the Rockies. My 35-year-old Viking Husqvarna had other ideas. Such as, retirement...

The new Brother Project Runway is a very nice machine for free-motion quilting, as long as you are doing small projects. Purple Haze is... not a small project!

Plus, I was working with a new machine that handles differently than the one I've known for three and a half decades.

Practice makes perfect. Purple Haze most definitely is not perfect, but it is done, and the needle on my confidence scale is rising once again.














I commandeered two leftover blocks from Purple Haze, squared them off, layered and stitched them together, then practiced quilting with the new machine and the very same thread I planned to use on the quilt.

The auto bobbin tension sure doesn't seem very accurate to me. My stitching was wobbly at first, but I got better as I went. Finally, I got the top thread tension set so that the underneath side didn't look as bad as it does on my newest potholder.


I was ready to begin quilting the monster quilt on the tiny throat of the new machine.


I had just begun quilting the sky section of the panel when I learned I'd have to have a biopsy on the massive mass near my thyroid. The tests all came back fine, and although I'm going to have to have another biopsy next year, I was so thrilled, I hid a few B9 swirls in my quilting.


Twenty-four and a half total quilting hours later, I was ready to bind. This time, I finished before the sun dipped completely below the horizon, and Lizard helped me take photos in a nearby park, because, well, this quilt is going to a kiddo.

This is the sixth quilt in my quest to make 15 quilts before Christmas for some very special little ones.




Although it was a struggle to manipulate this quilt in the Brother machine, I had fun working on this one -- except every time the bobbin thread ran out without telling me first. I loved working with the purples, and I loved being able to guide the quilt smoothly beneath the open-toe foot, compared to what a bear it had been to free-motion quilt on my beloved Viking Husqvarna. As much as I loved that old dinosaur, it just wasn't made for free-motion quilting. Free-motion quilting didn't exist when that machine was built.




The back of the quilt comes from a not-so-old sheet. I'd planned to use a very old (clean) purple sheet, but our basement flooded after the last (huge) snow in April. Snowmelt came leaked through the window well. 13 inches of snowmelt. Lizard discovered the mess when he came home from work, and the closest BIG thing to grab to dry up the BIG mess was the purple sheet I'd prepared for the quilt backing.

AAAAAAAACK!!!

Really, it did go to good use. Just not the use I'd intended...


When Lizard realized what he'd done, he offered to buy me another sheet to use on the back of the quilt. We had a purple sheet set on our bed. I asked if he was ready for a new and different color on the bed. He thought gray might be a nice change of pace, and the sheet on the bed was quickly replaced and repurposed.


Linking up with Busy Hands Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Crazy Mom Quilts.

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