Quarantine Sewing: Back to a Pillow I started 5 Years Ago

I did a bit of embroidery and a bit of quilting this past weekend. Specifically I added more details to my Camp Quarantine sampler and started straight line quilting an unfinished pillow project. But first I had to toss out the Posole I made a few months ago. I had started with some really quality grass fed pork and homemade sauce made from dried chiles and a lovely salad accompaniment made of cabbage, cilantro, and radishes and lime.

 

Even though I shared with the neighbors, you can see my pot was almost overflowing, and I had enough leftover in a quart jar that I stuck in my freezer. I just had way too many leftovers in my fridge and had to throw the defrosted posole away because I forgot about it. Oh well. Note to self, must continue to make smaller portions.

And so last night, I fed the hubs leftover pizza and myself leftover sinigang which I hadn't realized I still had until I scoured the fridge to consume something leftover that wasn't pizza--which meant more time for stitching since I didn't have to cook. I took a class some 5 years ago at my local quilt studio on how to free motion stitch on your domestic machine from a teacher named Jill Schumacher. We were instructed to make an Ohio Star pillow top on which to practice, and I used up the rest of my favorite Amy Butler Lotus fabric plus Kona cotton in baby pink and Cloud 9 organic fabric in mustard. I never did have the nerve to apply my clumsy practicing of free motion on the pillow top. I just didn't want to regret having made a horrible looking pillow and didn't even start. This weekend I took it off the hanger in my closet and just resorted to straight line quilting with the walking foot. I was going to spiral circles the middle square, but concentric circles in the middle square just didn't look pretty to me, which I seam ripped out. I opted instead for a squares within squares. And I like it.

On the pillow back, I decided to continue the motif of a lotus. I found an abstract lotus tattoo that I traced and then stitched its undulating curves and circular spirals very slowly but still using the walking foot. I like it. I'm going to surround the lotus with some wide cross hatching even though the Warm and Natural batting calls for quilting 10 inches apart which seems like an awful lot of space and room for the batting to bunch up.

I looked at the back side of the Ohio Star and feel even more in love with the straight line quilt pattern. 

And who knows if I'll use the hopping darning foot ever on a quilt project.