Honky Tonk

Let me start this post by showing off my new quilting gloves!  

For those of you who may not quilt often, these have rubber tipped fingers, helping you grip your quilt while quilting.  They make a HUGE difference (at least for me).  I might have also caught the finger tip of my last pair under the needle and accidentally stitched it to my last quilt.  :)  Luckily, my finger wasn't all the way in the tip of the glove, so no blood was involved, but the glove was quickly unraveling at the hole I made while cutting the glove off of the quilt and I had worn most of the rubber tips off anyway.  Quilting lesson of the day is over now.  :)

This is a quilt that I just finished up:

I bought this jelly roll off of a friend who had second thoughts after buying it. I had seen it earlier in an ad and was thoroughly amused with the  play of florals, plaid, sheet music, guitars, and mustaches.  :)  The name of the fabric line is Honky Tonk, hence the name of the post.

Jelly rolls (bundles of 2.5" strips from the same fabric line) are a lot of fun to work with and let you dive right into the sewing step of making a quilt.  I find that the cutting of all of the little pieces is the most tedious part of the process and for this quilt, all I had to cut was borders and the binding.  Some quilters would prefer to select each fabric and look down on precut sets of fabric, but sometimes that roll just catches your eye and it is fun to grab the roll and just start quilting!  They are also great if you need a gift fast!  After putting on the borders, this quilt is in the 60" x 72" range.

Here is a closeup of the mustaches.  :)

The really significant part of this quilt for me is the back.  This is my first quilt that I have quilted with minky on the back.  And it turned out great!  I pin basted it like I usually do and I had no problems with it shifting around, puckering, or rolling over on itself.  Success!

I did find that the weight of the quilt itself was MUCH heavier, so I had to make sure that I supported it well and get up and take breaks to let my shoulders rest a bit.  (With that said, it only took me a little over 2 hours to quilt it in a meandering loop pattern)  So I am happy with another viable option in my skills bag and Jared and Timothy are happy to have yet another "really soft" blanket on the couch.

Speaking of Timothy, here was the "space outfit" he came up with last night.  He then spent the next 20 minutes counting down, yelling, "Blast off!" and running through the house.

:)