Channel Lock Love

Well yesterday I had a really productive day.  Well kind of…..Rob was splitting his time trying to please the women in his life :)

He had to work on Jeri’s car for a bit. Change the alternator and work on some of the lights. He said while he was working on that I had to finish the quilt that was on the frame so he could install my  electronic channel locks. I have wanted electronic channel locks but couldn’t afford them. I believe ABM wants somewhere between 800-900$ for some switches and magnets? I am still in that area of my life where I have to justify where I spend my money. Will I be able to get my money back out of this purchase? Will it really be worth it?

I found a blog or something on the web of how someone else manufactured their own channel locks. Rob didn’t know what channel locks were or why I would need them. So I had to show him an example. I only wanted a horizontal one..I don’t really have a need for a vertical one. But if I need it Rob can always add it later. ( I am now thinking I may want it) but the nice thing too is that he was able to combine my Loricles stylus and the channel lock onto the same remote switch and combine everything into one thing so I don’t have all of these different switches and cords everywhere.  So Rob improved upon the idea I found and made them for around 100$. I can justify trying something for that kind of money to see if it’s useful and something that I will love/like.

So while he was working I worked on my own projects. I finished the borders for the one quilt…so that can be quilted now. I also got my scrappy quilt together …..I am still trying to decide if I should add borders? The original pattern doesn’t call for them. Modern quilts don’t typically use them. But my eye has been trained to want to frame everything in and make borders. So I am trying to test myself. I have to admit I am pretty giddy about all of that white space. Can you see all the muddy whites? There is such a huge difference in whites. You can’t tell until you mix and match them. This was a scrap quilt so I just used everything I had. But I have been buying Kona white by the bolt and I like the uniformity of just having one type of white. But I don’t know how realistic that is right now…..Cause i think I still have several in my stash. So the goal is to eventually just buy one type of white. 

This did make a huge dent in my white scrap bin ( like there is nothing left) but I can’t say it did anything to dent my 2 inch bin of strips. But I kind of knew it wouldn’t. :)

I also worked on “Easy Street” ( the one on Bonnie Hunter’s site) quite a bit yesterday. I have steps 1-7 finished YAY! Now I just have to put my blocks together and assemble the quilt. I like how it is turning out. I may have switched a few colors around ( I kept waffling on the placement and finally just went with it..when I started cutting and think I could have gone a different way) if I were to do it again…but overall I am happy with it. I was tired of working on that and decided I really wanted to try out my new Channel locks.

So Nan and I have been working together for awhile now. She makes me scrappy quilts from my scraps and I quilt for her. I love having all of these scrappy just for these occasions. This particular scrappy came back in my very first batch from her.   I loved it …so I have been hoarding it. I kept thinking I should get it quilted but I couldn’t decide how to quilt it. She’s such a designer. The red/pink corner stones and border are made from a fabric that has all of these (kind of pixelated) squares in shades of red & pink. So she made blocks ( kind of like crazy blocks) using all different types of squares ..so it has a whole theme going on. The whole thing just appeals to me. I kept thinking I needed to quilt something flourishy or circular….cause that’s typically the “rule” ( I use that term loosely) to soften the edges of the all the hard edges. I know that would look nice. But I just couldn’t bring myself to quilt it…..I don’t know why?

So I  immediately thought about this quilt for cross hatch practice last night. I didn’t even look through my bin for any other quilt. I could just picture this quilted with the channel locks. It carries the theme of “squares” all the way through…from start to finish.  It only took my 35 minutes to quilt this whole quilt from start to finish. Pretty impressive. I didn’t measure the lines…I just eyeballed them. So that is one reason. I will also just say that the lines are quilted straight but if the quilt isn’t loaded or pieced straight it will look like some of the lines aren’t. But I also have to say that looking at the whole quilt your eye corrects that. I will have to practice loading it a specific way. I also had to take the quilt off the frame and re-load it( which I counted in my time…I have red snappers..so it’s totally not a big deal.) I only had Rob make my channel locks horizontal thinking only of this whole quilt process and not a single block process…..oops. Anyway It’s way easier to take the whole quilt off and turn it after you get one side completely finished. 

I just love the back. Simple and beautiful. Who would have thought I would love channel locks so much? Weird? LOL

Thanks Honey! You are the best!