Arcs, Curves & Points With Rulers Border Quilting Progress

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! The weather here continues to be warm and dry. I'm trying to decide when to get my winter tires taken off. I usually do that in May since March and April are out snowiest months, but it's looking like I should just get it done now. What a strange year! I've also been enjoying March Madness this week. Unfortunately, my team, the Kansas Jayhawks, just lost last night at the buzzer, but there are still other Big 12 teams for me to root for.

In between basketball games, I was able to get some work done on my Angela Walters Arcs, Curves & Points With Rulers Quilt Along (QAL). After watching Angela's video, I decided that I like her idea of quilting the red portion of the border with swirls, leaving random triangles in the border unquilted. You can't see the border quilting in this picture, but here is the entire quilt with that part of the border quilted:

Arcs, Curves & Points With Riulers

And here is a close-up where you can see the quilting:

Arcs, Curves & Points With Rulers - Border Quilting

My swirls are not as smooth and consistent as I would like, but they look really good when they're all put together. I'll put some swirls in the quilt interior, too, to provide some consistency in the quilting. I'm going to quilt straight lines in the white part of the border, again as Anglea suggested. I'll be using a ruler for that so I'll get that done, too, before adding the binding so the binding doesn't get in the way of the ruler.

I also made a lot of progress on my Atween shawl designed by Laura Nelkin. I finally got all of the pieces put together and started on the border. It's starting to look like something now!

Atween

I finished the I-cord edging on the top edge and now I'm working on the bottom border.

Atween - Close-Up

This shawl is LONG! The bottom border is 424 stitches wide. I was careful when picking up stitches to get the right count, but somehow ended up with an extra stitch when I started the patterned rows. I just decreased a stitch in this row and added stitch markers so I should be able to tell if I get off again for any reason and fix the problem as it occurs. That decrease stitch will be invisible in the final shawl, but mistakes like that in the patterned section would cause the pattern to not line up correctly.

Finally, I also did some work on my Pansy Pincushion designed by Sue Spargo. I was able to add the embroidery on Flower #2.

Pansy Pincushion

Pansy Pincushion - Flower #2

I had some trouble getting Bullion Loops (the blue flower petals) to look good, but they turned out fine in the end. I really enjoy doing the embroidery!

Nancy