Godstone Grannies Update and another African Quilt by Anne H

YAHOO! I've stitched all of my Godstone Grannies blocks into rounds. Here you can see them all in their storage box ready to be stitched into blocks! It looks like a bunch of hexagon noodles!

Sometimes I like to stitch my hexagons in rounds. Godstone Grannies is made of diamond blocks so four hexagons make up the center. The next round is made of 12 hexagons, the following of 20 hexagons and the final round is made up of 28 hexagons.  I sew the rounds together and pin them together. That's what you see in the box, a bunch of these.

In the picture below you can see them laid out ready for to be stitched together. I'll use a colour of thread to match the round that is being added. In this instance I'll choose an orange-gold thread to stitch the round of 12 hexagons to the 4 rusty hexagons in the center. I'll sew all the way around and then close the opening. I like doing it this way because it is much easier that starting and stopping by stitching one hexagon at a time! The next round will be an off white thread to sew the round of twenty hexagons and finally a deep gold will be used to stitch the final round of 28 hexagons.

This is my Mom's (Anne H) most recent African themed quilt. This one is very dimensional  and you get a feel of depth. I will quilt it for her and then she will add her magic touches to bring it alive! It measures roughly 19" square.

I pin basted the quilt and then started the quilting. I used Superior Monopoly on top and The Bottom Line in the bobbin. I quilted around all of the appliques. Once that was done the fun could begin! I started by quilting the foreground, mid-ground and background with a variety of threads.

I love the little girls - they are so cute! You can see that the grasses in the mid-ground were worked in a up and down zigzag type of stitch. This is a great movement for coordinating the hand machine speed when quilting. It is a smallish design so it would also be a great warm up or practice exercise before moving on to a good quilt. I always do a warm up on a practice sandwich before I start quilting. It serves several purposes: it helps me get into the groove of the quilting movement, to check my tension and to test my thread.

Once the whole thing was quilted I bound it with a facing. My Mom likes to have her quilts finished this way because she wants them to look like pages torn from a magazine. I'll return the quilt to her so she can put the final touches on her quilt. Once she has beaded and embellished to her heart's delight I'll share pictures with you!

That's it for today! Until I post again, happy sewing!
Karen H