Hands2Help Reveal

I have my completed quilt to show. Supernova was showcased with some instructions by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict here. I had some orange in my stash and so away I went. I really enjoyed making this.

Thank you to my sis helping with the quilt holding :-)
















For quilting, I wanted to use my rulers and do something different than usual....which are allover designs.  I struggled with coming up with something very interesting though.  I finally settled with just some defining lines.  It was not very exciting but I did get a lot better with ruler use by the time I finished this.

This quilt measures about 60" square.  It has Hobb's 80/20 batting and is sewn with Superior Threads Sew Fine and Bottom Line in the bobbin.

Supernova is headed to Emily of Em's Scrap Bag to give to someone going through chemotherapy.  Her charity is called Chemo Cozies. 

Thank you, Sarah for a fun design idea and for hosting Hands2Help!

Thank you to Emily for an avenue of sharing our quilts to cheer someone.

For anyone interested, I learned a couple of things with this ruler work business :-) 

I have not been trusting of the water soluble pens used for design marking but finally just went for it with this quilt. Long ago I had purchased a bottle of SewClean after taking a class from Pam Clark at a longarm convention up in Spokane, Washington (I think?).  I sprayed rather too liberally to get that blue ink to disappear and then found the quilt top fabric had some pieces that ran color. After finishing the quilting and the binding, I stuck it in the washer with just regular soap and a Color Catcher (purchased at my local market, not Amazon). The water took out all of the blue ink and the Color Catcher caught a lot of the excess color coming from non prewashed fabric.  I use to prewash everything but got away from it using precuts.  

I had gotten my fabric so wet with the SewClean though that fabric color had run all the way through to the backing.  This didn't come out with the first wash so I ran it through another cycle and this time added Synthrapol as well.  This took care of the excess color and the quilt was definitely clean :-)

I have since starting using yet another tool though besides SewClean...or actually...besides using my SewClean bottle which now just has water in it!

I am sewing on a Double Wedding Ring quilt that I made over a decade ago (!) and using that blue pen a lot.  This time if I want to remove the lines right away, I'm using a Sewline Aqua Eraser Pen. This was given to me in a big box of goodies from Moda that I was selected to receive a couple of years ago.  This is refillable using just water and maybe some dish detergent or whatever...I actually think just water will be be effective enough. It also is precise so I can just take out the line and not worry about dark fabric color running in the block next to where I'm using it. So thank you yet again to Moda for sharing this treat and useful tool with me. 

I am now deep into quilting the Double Wedding Ring.  It is going to take me awhile and with other things going on, I don't think I will get to work on it much very soon.  But I'm playing with my blue pen and curved rulers and learning a lot. I am also working with a friend making a Bonnie Hunter mystery from this past New Year's called En Provence. I'm having a great time making all the parts.

More later  :-)