Easing back into quilting

I'm sick of talking about my arm and I know you are sick of reading about it. I'm actually doing much better and continuing to improve. But if you had told me when I first strained my coracobrachialis muscle that it would take 2 months or more to get back to full function I would not have believed you. I'm so much better but there are some movements that are still uncomfortable and one of those is moving the quilting machine diagonally. But I was itching to get back to quilting something.

That something was this quilt that Mom made. She agreed to let me quilt it with straight lines.

In the end I think that straight lines were just about perfect for this quilt! More importantly, another quilt is closer to being done.

Mom used some hand dyed fabrics that I gave her a while back but she needed more for a border. We couldn't decide on green or purple so we decided to use both. I pleated a fabric and dipped one folded edge in green and the other in purple. It resulted in a cool stripe texture.

A couple of people on Facebook have asked for the pattern. I don't know the pattern but it would be easy to draft. This is the block and it's 12" finished. The wide green side pieces are finished 3" x 12" and the center section is 6" x 12". The littler squares are 2" finished, They are bordered in 1" finished strips. After the 3 blocks are sewn together a 1" finished strip is sewn on each side to bring it to 6" wide. Does that make sense? Very easy!

She found a commercial print wide back that is an almost perfect match to the green. Here you can see the secret to straight line quilting. I space my lines randomly so that I don't have to do any measuring. It's consistently inconsistent so it looks "right" and it's much faster than measuring for equidistant lines. 

Next up will either be one of my quilts to get straight lines or Mom's third quilt (a log cabin) to be stippled with my left arm.