Saturday, October 17, 2015

By Hand and by Machine

I helped my friend and Florida Orchestra librarian Ella finish a baby quilt recently.

It's understandable that she didn't have time to finish it herself.  An orchestra librarian is one of those behind-the-scenes staff people that makes it possible for us symphony musicians to do our jobs.  It's a monumental task to acquire the music (much of it is rented), have it sorted, bowed, edited and in folders ready for rehearsals.  It's not unusual for us to rehearse and perform 3 entirely different programs in the space of a single week, since not only do we do subscription concerts (Pops, Masterworks, etc.) but there are also many additional services such as youth concerts, park concerts, community outreach performances, etc. etc.  And all of those require that the right music is on the right music stand at the right time.  An epic task indeed.

On to the quilt:

It's The Very Hungry Caterpillar!














When I received the quilt she had already done a lot of hand quilting in the large blocks.













The large butterfly block had particularly beautiful hand quilting.













 One of my jobs was to machine applique around all of the food blocks.














I used a narrow zig zag stitch for the applique.
This was really "appli-quilting", as the quilt was already basted and partially quilted when I received it.











I thought the cocoon block was particularly beautiful, and needed nothing additional from me.




















Aside from the applique I mostly added a lot of "foundation" type quilting-- just long lines around the large blocks and borders, which sets off the hand quilting and will help the quilt wear well and survive love and laundry.

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