EDITED this morning at 8:00. I am using last nights post as my design wall Monday post as I will be continuing my projects that I talked about here. Go visit Judy at Patchwork Times to see what everyone is working on.
Hand quilting can go slowly – it just depends on how many hours you feel like sitting still or until your fingers go numb 
I spent the last 3 hours or so quilting in the living room watching reruns of NCIS and actually I guess you could say more like listening to and then finally tuning out the last episode and just wanted to get a section finished before I put it away for the night.
Here are some photos of the work so far, I’m not sure how well it is visible in this photo but I am quilting across the middle all the way from end to end.
The photo from the back shows up a little more I think. The back looks wrinkled in the photo but it is mainly just the way I tossed it on the floor. When I put it in the square hoop and tug on it a little the wrinkles disappear. Using cotton batting really helps for hand quilting as the batting really sticks to the fabric. A little tug on the fabric here and there and the wrinkles go away.
A close up of the back.
A close up of the front.
I think I am about a third of the way for the quilting on this quilt. I also got my red circles ready to make into circles tomorrow for the applique block – by that I mean I have the circles all basted ready to pull tight on the heat safe circle and press to have ready to stitch. I have 3 quilt group meetings at the end of the week. Thursday night is the first Thursday night of the month group, Friday morning is a weekly group and Saturday some of us are meeting for a new group meeting at our local Hobby Lobby in the classroom for a work day of anything we want to bring, this will be the first Saturday of the month. I think I will get my applique block ready to stitch on for these groups and I can also bring this quilt shown above with me and my smaller hoop and work on that also. I want to make sure I have something to work on that does not involve bringing my sewing machine with me so I will keep the applique block for later in the week so I will have hand work to do. The less to carry in is what works best for me.
I am up to 15 pineapple blocks now – wow I am on a roll – now will I ever get close to 300 blocks for a queen size? Who knows but I think some people might have been laying down a challenge to me by saying they thought it was doubtful I would last that long I’m thinking this might not be a challenge I want but we will see where it goes this year.
I’m not sure what I am doing tomorrow. It is a good chance of rain tonight so it might be too soggy to work outside tomorrow – we will see. We do need the rain and it will help the plants so if it rains at night all the better. Only problem is that it is humid now and the house is getting a tad too warm. Ceiling fans are on and at least the second day in the month of February that we have windows open!
After I starting making another pineapple block I thought I would take photo’s along the way so you can see how you do it. Or should I say how I do it? I have never taken a class but I was shown how to do it by another quilter.
this is the point I was at when I started to take photos
this is with the pieces building as a building block- going round and round
select a piece of fabric, make sure it is the correct size, you can hold it up to a light and see if it is long enough and wide enough to cover the area needed.
from the front put in a pin to hold it in place if you wish - you do not need a pin if you feel comfortable without one
sew directly on the line, using a very small stitch - smaller the stitch the better for when you need to tear all of this paper off
flip it back over and see where you stitched. Now flip it back to the sewing side, fold your paper back and trim your seam. This can be 1/8th of an inch or a 1/4 - your choice, when using such small pieces I eyeball it at about 1/8th
then I press it down
then fold back each side one at a time and trim - again I do this to 1/8" when using tiny pieces but a 1/4" works well on larger blocks to do this you just fold your paper back to the size of seam you want and cut next to the paper - use a ruler to cover the paper if you think you might cut into the paper by accident. If the cut off access is still big enough to use in another block I save it - it gets tossed back to the scraps as this one did. The yellow ruler on my table is a add a quarter inch ruler that is used for paper piecing.
keep building around the block - follow the numbers. On this piece I want to show you what happens if you haven't looked at a piece close enough. On this blue piece in the little corner there is a piece of salvage showing - in this case it will be alright it will be covered by the next seam. But that is what you need to look for when you are selecting your next piece and to make sure it is big enough.
The next piece - white corner - covers that little bit of salvage and no need to pick out a piece to replace. But if the salvage edge had been a little larger I would have had to pick that piece out.
Final step is to trim all the way around the block leaving a quarter inch seam. Leave the paper on the block and you will eventually join all blocks together and tear the paper off when the top is finished. A pain in the you know what and it might take you a couple days to do it depending on the size of your quilt. This is a good way though to use up tiny scraps and the fabric will hold it's shape and not stretch out. This block measures 6 1/2 inches.
my workspace when paper piecing. I have my small portable table set up with little iron mat/cutting mat, travel size iron, rotary cutter ect. The taller cutting table has my scraps dumped on to it, and then the sew ezi table. Small area but all I have to do is rotate the chair and everything is right there. Everything is within reach. Normally for more exercise I iron in the living room, but when using these little pieces I would be popping up and down so often that I took the easier way out and have it set next to me.
Last year, I don’t remember when, I had an idea to use up some of my scraps by making scrappy 6 1/2 inch pineapple blocks. The idea is to eventually make enough of them for a queen size quilt. Only problem is I am slow at paper piecing which is the method I am using. I actually worked off and on all day on one block!! Of course the rest of the day I was blowing my nose so maybe it is possible I could have finished two blocks instead if I wasn’t grabbing Kleenex? I am estimating right now that I need about 256 blocks to make a quilt that is about 100 x 100 inches large. I have 5 finished – 4 of them from last year LOL.
my 5 blocks. Some of the color choices weren't perfect as I had several dark colors too close to the same shade next to each other, but I will be more careful in the future - none of these are getting tossed out!! and I'm not picking them apart either 
With so many blocks in a quilt I really don't think anyone will notice a few bad color choices here and there.
I will continue to work on this quilt for several years I bet. I had sore fingers from quilting and just didn’t feel like working on any of my other projects today so went back to this one. I used the Singer Featherweight. I thought I needed some practice with the machine as I had not used it since Bea had worked on it. The machine worked great although at first I thought I was going back to the same old problems with tension but then realized when I put it in the storage bag that I had bumped the upper tension dial. Got that back to where it should be and practiced threading and putting the bobbin in and then got started sewing.
Learning how to use my new phone has been interesting. There are aps for everything it seems but I do not want to spend money on buying them. We found one ap for the weather channel that is free and you select gps and it finds the location wherever you are and tells you what the weather will be and shows you a weather map too. That sure will come in handy when we are traveling.
I will select the winner for the give away tomorrow and then mail it out on Monday – good luck and thank you to those who participated. You still have time this evening if you want to get in on it.
