Happy Halloween

  Take a guess which one the young man in the family carved! We were very proud of ourselves for getting these carved last night rather than this afternoon after school in a mad rush before trick-or-treating began!
Last night I also obsessed about the new quilt in progress.  I started cutting and sewing, and changing the plan as I went along and the next thing I knew it was way, way past my bedtime.  I made progress though.  With another few hours of work today, this is where it stands:
I’ve been having trouble sorting out exactly how I want to piece the body of the lighthouse, and I have to rework my plan for other pieces of the lower half to balance out sizes and colours a bit with the upper half. I’m also peeved that my log cabin blocks are just a smidge smaller than they should be so I’ll have to redo a few seams to make the border fit around the center as the graph paper claims it should.  That said, I’m pleased with this overall so far.
Tomorrow’s task will be to stay clear of the quilting corner and clear the desk of office chores.  It will be tough though.  The desk sits on the opposite wall from the sewing machine…

Cutting fabric

I am finally cutting into this little stack of fabric.

These are mostly “Greetings from Canada” by Thimbleberries. (The light blue one second from the left is from my stash.) Mom sent these to me a year ago and I don’t think she quite believed me this summer when I assured her I had a plan for it that just needed to simmer a bit longer.
Here’s the plan:

OK, it doesn’t look like much in the picture :).  Maybe if you click on it to enlarge it you might be able to make out some of it.  I’ve drawn it out a few times to tweak this or that and I’m still not sure it will work the way I want it to.  You’ll just have to be patient right along with me until I get these pieced:

This just goes to show why I’d like to win a copy of the EQ7 software in The Pickledish Patch’s givewaway  It would be so much quicker and easier to design a quilt and I’d get a sneak peek before I actually sew it up!

The giveaway closes on October 27 so you still have time to go over and diminish my chances by entering too (I’ll understand and won’t take it personally, really!)

Seam ripping again, and again, and…

You should know it’s time to step away from the sewing room when you spend more time becoming better acquainted with the seam ripper than the sewing machine.

Today I unpicked the free motion quilting I started on Wooffles’ quilt last night. It was worth it and I then spent a comfortable while practicing free motion on this little quilt.  It turned into a little sampler of different filler patterns.



By the time I was done, I decided I might as well put the binding on too.  I decided to use TLC Stitches’ faux piped binding and I happily cut yellow strips for the “piping” and pulled out leftover purple strips for the binding.

Mistake #1: I cut the piping strip 1/4 inch too narrow and didn’t have any more of the yellow.   That’s OK, I just trimmed the purple narrower too and hoped for the best.

Mistake #2: I sewed a right side to a wrong side as I joined the binding strips.  Seam ripper!

Mistake #3: I sewed a beautifully straight 74” seam joining the long edges of the binding and the piping.  It just happened to be a 3/8” seam.  Another time I might have just left it but I remembered my binding strip was already 1/4” narrower than it should be and I didn’t think I could fudge with another 1/4 inch gone.  Seam ripper, it’s nice to see you again!

Mistake #4: I reset the seam allowance to a lovely perfect 1/4 inch, and promptly sewed the right face of the binding to the wrong face of the piping strip.  At least I noticed at only 30 inches into the seam this time.  Still, I had another visit with the seam ripper.

At this point a sane person would have stepped away from the sewing room, but my stubborn streak asserted itself.  Happily, it exuded a stronger aura than the seam ripper, which was not needed (much) again.



Here’s the final product.  It’s a little more “modern” than my usual work.  I don’t think any of those quilting motifs would work terribly well on my more traditional tops but it was a fun exercise.  Wooffles and his owner are perfectly happy with it, too, so it was worthwhile!