Can you handle a few more beach photos from me? How about a craft on the beach? Here's our new beach blanket quilt thingy (Is it a quilt if it's 'quilted', even without batting?). We tested it out yesterday for the first time at the beach with some friends, and so far it's passing the test.
It's backed with a vintage bedspread that's got that heavy, but soft worn cotton feel. I love that feeling. I cut the edges of the spread to make it smaller (it measures 62x70), and to use for the binding. For the top, I used quite a bit of the munki munki I had kicking around (those prints scream out "fun' and 'beach' to me), which I thought was going to make it terribly overstimulating to look at, and it did- in my studio room, but once we got it on the beach it was fine, and I liked it so much more (of course, I like everything more at the beach). I like the weight of it - it's not so light that it will blow away (that makes me batty), but it's not so heavy that it's cumbersome to carry. I added some ties to the corners to make for easy rolling and attaching to the beach bag (because a mama of three has only so many extra hands at the beach). I was desperate to try out the freehand Stitch Regulator on my machine for quilting, which was the motivation for cranking this out (that, and that summer is half over) at the ungodly hour that I did. I tried to use a sort of random pattern of swirls (ha!), but it was my first time doing so on this machine (test swatches? huh?), and it shows. There's quite a bit of puckering on the back, and the swirls are less than swirly in some spots. Whatever. It's for the beach. And at the beach it's just fine.
