Sashing

Adding white frames to all the 100-patch blocks, paper piecing 20 cornerstones and assembling 31 striped sashing units kept me busy the last couple of days.

Today I finally saw it all come together.  It looks better in person.  In the photo the red sashing overpowers the yellow sashing and seems to bulge out.  In person the two are better balanced.  I guess it’s a scale issue.

Maybe a closer view would show the balance more.

I still need to add borders.  There will be a 1” white border all around to float the center, followed by a medium width red border, then a pieced red and white border (like the sashing, but all white on a red background and a little wider) then a thin red border to finish it all off.  The quilt will measure about 59” x 73”.

Tonight will be either paper piecing X units or striped units for the pieced border, depending on how tired I am.  Right now I could go either way.  I’m excited to see this come together though so I might make a push to get more than less done.

Ready to sew

I really felt like sewing this week but since the machine was in the shop for maintenance my family put up with grumpy mom instead (sorry about that, family!)  Yesterday I was seized with the urge to cut up fabric.

Today the quilt shop called, a whole week earlier than I expected, to say my sewing machine was ready to come home.  Must be fate!

What you see above is going to turn into pieced sashing and a pieced border for these:

Guess what I’m going to be doing tonight?

Nothing fancy

This summer I daydreamed about getting a sewing cabinet, the kind my machine could drop down into so that the machine bed was level with the table top, and that was large enough to support a quilt to machine quilt.  It was just daydreams because that just isn’t in the budget any time soon.

A couple of weeks ago I got this instead.

It doesn’t have a spot for the machine to drop down, but it is just as large as the kitchen table I have been using when I machine quilt, so it will hold a quilt. It is sturdy and doesn’t wobble.  And I can cut fabric on it.  And I can press fabric on it using my table top pressing board (that white thing in the back). 

And it was FREE.  Can’t beat free!  My daughter, hubby and I just had to lug it on foot about 3 blocks from the curb where we found it with a “free” sign taped on.  We got few odd looks from folks driving by, and a few (OK, a lot of) moments of wondering how exactly I was going to make the thing fit in my space, but now I’m all set.

I am going to leave the sewing machine on the small desk unless I’m quilting a quilt and need the extra table space.  Most of the time I can keep this set up as a cutting and pressing table. It’s great not to be shuttling back and forth upstairs to the kitchen table to cut fabric, and to not have to clear everything away when the table is required for meals. I’m also looking forward to not cluttering up the dining area with my machine and supplies when I’m quilting a quilt over several days (or weeks!)

I figured out how I want to quilt that fall quilt on the wall and I was all set to move the machine over and get started when I realized the machine was overdue for its annual cleaning and maintenance at the shop.  Darn.  I really didn’t want to void the warranty, so I am now patiently waiting for the machine to come home again so I can test the table and get that quilt done!  I suppose now would be a good time to catch up on chores…