The Needle Chaser?

Well, I think life is finally turning more back to normal around here now. I have been spending every available moment quilting on the Red & White quilt that I was making for my Quilt Guild's Challenge that was due on the 9th. I have mentioned the quilt in previous posts, but could not even show a photo of my progress on it because it had to remain a secret until the the challenge was unveiled last Tuesday. Many long hours were put into the creation of this quilt, and while I became weary of it from time to time I am very happy with the result. The winners of the Challenge are pictured below. From left to right, third place, second place (Me!) and the first place winner. Since I did not get prior permission to list the other winners names, I will refrain from posting them, but aren't their quilts just wonderful!

It is a rainy gloomy day here and it is not easy to take a nice photo, so until that photo can be taken I will just have to share these. The block's actual name is the Wild Goose Chase. I am thinking about naming this quilt "The Needle Chaser" because I broke, bent and blunted more needles in the making of this quilt then any other quilt that I have ever made.

I used Kona Cotton fabric, and it tends to be on the heavy side, so the seam allowances were quite thick at times. Because of this the open toe foot on the sewing machine barely cleared in some areas. (I quilted this on my regular Pfaff sewing machine.) Moving the quilt around during the quilting process sometimes caused the foot to move out of place. When this happened of course the needle would break when it hit the foot. Ugh! When I was piecing the blocks I found that I had to sew through so many layers of fabric that my Pffaf couldn't handle it well. The needle would bend and then blunt. I ended up piecing the whole top on my little antique Singer Featherweight machine. It held up to the heavy layers just fine. Go figure!

I used silk thread in the white areas there the highly detailed quilting was required. It makes it easier to have dense quilting in small spaces.

Now that this little quilt is finished I can now get back to reading my favorite blogs and getting my house back into order after being neglected. Talk about the laundry that is waiting for me!