Good Couple of Days!

I've been going back and forth this weekend, quilting on the Q-20 and piecing on my Dream Machine, working two projects at once. 

Grabbed this out of the Partially Quilted stack. The pattern was published in the April 2011 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting from Better Homes & Gardens; it's called Posey Patch. I did the piecing, my friend Tiffany Hayes of Needle in a Hayes Stack (great pattern line and she is a fellow Craftsy instructor) did the applique.

Yesterday I finished the curvy lines in the background; still deciding on what fills I want in them. Today I quilted feathers in the floral area around the inner star and did a freehand design in the pink squares that I found in one of Angela Walters' Shape by Shape books. Those books are a gold mine of ideas!

This is another design from one of the books; I did this with a ruler foot and a straight edge quilting ruler from Westalee Designs.

I started by marking two lines. The top one is 3/4" from the tip of the triangle, the second is 1-1/4", so they are spaced 1/2" apart.

I was able to do two adjacent triangles before cutting the thread and moving to the next pair.

Started in the corner where the two triangles joined, then used the spacing gauge tool to make sure I would hit that first mark. I'm using the 1/4" leg; since the outside of the ruler foot is exactly 1/4" from the needle, one side of the spacing gauge tool (let's call it a SGT, OK?) touches the ruler and the free edge shows the path the needle will take as you stitch along the ruler with the ruler foot.

Stitched to that top mark, then moved the SGT to the corner to align the ruler properly for that section.

Moved the SGT to the lower of the two marks and aligned the ruler to stitch to it.

Then stitched to that mark and back to the beginning to finish that boomerang shape. Repeated it on the other triangle, then cut the thread and did the rest of them. There are only 5 pieced blocks, so it didn't take that long.

Dan decided that this would be a good day to hang all of my stencils up on the wall next to the new machine, so I moved over to the other machine and stitched a few triangles.

Now they're easy to get to!

Back to the Q to stitch that same boomerang shape in the border triangles. Then I cut, sewed and pressed the binding. I'm having foot surgery in a couple of days and thought that maybe I could do the hand sewing on the binding while I can't use the machines.

Yep, it's my right foot, so no driving for two weeks! Maybe I can teach myself to sew with my left foot?