A little bit of heaven

Love is... machine quilting while baby sleeps, his big brother is helping Daddy fix a car, and Miss 5 is sitting next to me happily singing "Hot Cross Buns" (what we sang as we ate them for breakfast) as she crafts away dreamily... Such a special moment to capture in a photo.

Love the view

Before the quilting was started on Project Quilting challenge 2 for the year, there was a bit of an oops  to unpick. I guess it's because the timeline is so strict, (binding day tomorrow, post on internet Sunday). There are a lot of vintage quilts that are just so unique because of a whoops, or they ran out of a particular fabric, and those are some of my favourite features of antique quilts. I always wondered how they could make such a mistake, but with little space for laying out all the blocks, it's no wonder there are perfectly imperfect quilts.

unpick to turn applique block

This is my favourite tool for marking straight lines of machine quilting. The Clover Hera marker. It's much faster than masking tape, works on any colour fabric and the crease irons or washes out. See the funny shape? It is based on a design traditionally made from a bone. Us vegetarians definitely prefer the plastic version. You can also use it to "finger press" seams so you are not getting up to the iron all the time.

Clover hera marker

Then a little bit of free-motion quilting around the applique.

It quilted like a dream, because I used a drill weight fabric for backing. The backing didn't want to bend or crease, and being a little bit stiff it kept the quilt flat. I originally bought it for Christmas tablecloths because it was marked down to $2 a metre, but because it worked so well on the back of a small spray-basted quilt, I will use it for small backings.

bargain backing fabric in a drill weight

Very excited to be on schedule, ready to trim and add binding tomorrow. And tonight's project? Contact some more school books ready for Monday. Nearly finished covering A4 exercise books.

Tonight I am linking up as I "Whoop! Whoop!" how happy I am to be on track with the challenge.

And linking up with a FNSI (Friday Night Sew In).