Labor Day Loot

On the recommendation of Quilting Revolution we took a trip out east, to an Amish quilt store called Spring Lake Fabrics in Savannah, NY... I can't say I actually needed these fat quarters, but needed can be such a vague word can't it!

The ducks with the umbrellas will find a place in my in-progress Rainy Days quilt, either to replace or do half-and-half with the ducks fat quarter I got the other day. The tractors will probably form a quilt of some description for my 4 year old nephew who loves tractors. And the rest... well they seemed like they might be useful at some point in the future! :)

I also got a 1 yard piece of check fabric - I could see enough to tell there are different shades around the squares and I liked the effect... again, I've no idea what it'll be used for but at $4 / yd you can't really go wrong can you?!

On the way home we passed a sign advertising worms for $1.75 / lb... I mused that worms probably taste like chicken, so maybe you could make a very cheap "wriggly chicken stew"... but I don't think I'll be running any further with that idea... times ain't that hard yet ;)

Righty-ho, I better stop picking up more fabric and get a move on with my current projects!!

Hello Kitty

So after yesterday's frustrations, this afternoon was a success! I finished stitching together the extension strips and joined them to my backing material, so now it should be as wide as the quilt top (though this remains to be tested!)

As you can see, Maggie cat was a great help!

In the photos you might be able to see the first long strip of extension fabric attached to the far side of the backing sheet.

I have to say I'm finding these strips of fabric fiddly! And these are 2.5" wide... the thought of making a quilt out of a jelly roll of 1.5 to 2" strips sounds horrendous!! I think I'll stick to squares and just use strips as borders! ( my next quilt has those - strips on 2 sides of the squares!)

Maggie cat is going to be a terror when it comes to taping and spraying the various layers, which is the next step!

Not Very Grown Up

Today was supposed to be a day of sewing some 2.5 inch strips together to form a 2-yard strip, which in turn would be sewed as an extension to the owl backing fabric to make it as wide as the quilt top, ready for binding.

So I pinned the first 2 pieces of strip together and did a nice neat stitching job... pinned the next strip to it and... made a complete hash of joining them!

I somehow didn't have all my thread pulled through, and had a weird loop where I'd done something odd in the process! So I unpicked it... or rather struggled for about 15 minutes! It wasn't easy to get to the ending knot I'd done and not being able to see I didn't want to risk chopping up the fabric in the process!

Eventually I succeeded and re-stitched the strips together. And made an even worse hash of it!! Firstly there was a gap where I'd gone through one piece of fabric but not the other. Second there was a yucky wrinkle or bunching in the hem... so I knew I'd need to un-pick and re-sew again.

At the point where I couldn't get hold of the knot I gave up and threw the whole mess on the floor! So what if that's not very grown up! It made me feel better about it :)

Edgy

I deliberated long and hard, but in the end the bank manager wouldn't let me splash out on an electric bias tape maker... so I've got one of those cheap $8 manual ones that you feed the fabric through and it creases it in all the right places, and you iron it as it comes out the other side.

So, this weekend I'll mostly be making bias tape!

Actually I have to sew 2 strips of 2.5" wide fabric up each length of the backing fabric because it's 43" and my quilt top is 48"... once I've done that the bias tape binding will attach to the top and those extension strips.

I was a little puzzled why my 6" squares hadn't lost 1/2" each in their seams, giving my 8x 5.5" strips, or 44" quilt top instead of a 48" one... but measuring a square revealed each square to be 6.5" - so they did lose their 0.5" seam width, but unfortunately not making them a little bit smaller! ... I will make my quilt tops a better size for my backing next time maybe!

Happy long holiday weekend to my American readers (and me, yay no work on Monday!!!!!)

Not the Sharpest Needle in the Pin Cushion

Recently Magpie Mimi said she felt dumb because her "broken" sewing machine seems to apparently be fine and so has sat unused for several weeks! She asked if anybody else had those moments of feeling a few sandwiches short of a picnic...

Boy howdy! For the last month I've been trying one of my blood pressure pills in patch form, so instead of 3 pills per day I could have a nice smooth constant delivery throughout the day. I've been dutifully applying these patches every Sunday, and I have to admit I've not really noticed any benefit. Nothing to make it worth paying for the patches since I still need the pills too.

But it came to the end of the month and I realised on Sunday just gone, that I was going to be out of patches. So I rummaged in the box in case there was a spare lurking inside... lo and behold! 4 spare patches!

So I read the box. Contents: 4 patches and 4 extra adhesive plasters (band aids for my US readers)... guess what I'd been wearing for the last month - the 4 adhesive tops!! Doh!

So yes, I wasn't feeling like the sharpest needle in the pin cushion!

But I perked up today when I discovered I'd won a copy of Sue Patten's book, "Quilting Possibilities...Freehand Filler Patterns... thanks to Pigtails and Quilts blog! ... see, you can tell I'm excited because I've actually made the blog references hyperlinks so you can just clicky click click over on to read their great blogs too!

Right, off for a bath and to listen to some of my book! Happy sewing :)

Frilly Edges

This morning we ventured out into the frilly edges of Hurricane Irene! Apart from a bit of gusty wind there's not much sign of the stormy weather here yet, though I imagine we'll see some rain later today... nothing like the poor folk along the coast have seen.

But venture out at 9am we did, so I could get some more fabric! Well I must get the borders done if I'm going to get my quilt finished for the male quilters competition entry deadline on Sept 26!

I found a nice tan Kona cotton for $6/yd, so I got 3/4 yd of that, which should be enough to cut 4 or 5 inch strips, either straight (along the width of the fabric) or bias (diagonal up the fabric)... the online calculator says 2/3 yd is enough for 4" wide strips, but I'd really like to use 5" strips since I'm making up for the backing of my quilt being 43" and the top being about 48"... so, I'm intending to center the backing so there's 2.5" of quilt top over hanging it, so the border will stretch the 2.5" to where the quilt top ends, plus about an inch to go up the side of the backing / batting / quilt top, and maybe an inch to give a little border to the top...

all that mathematics seems to work in my head, but we shall see in practice! I'll be doing a dry run measurement with some fabric scraps first!

I also got a can of adhesive spray for attaching all the quilt layers together ready for pinning and then sewing. I got a heat one, that you apply, position the layers, let dry and then iron to fuse. At $16 per can it's not cheap, but a 40% coupon helped bring the price down to under $10! I'll report back on how well it works!

In other news, here's some pics from the beginnings of quilt 2! ... it will be made up of rectangular blocks each with a white strip border on 2 sides, so that's what I'm hand stitching together at the moment. There's quite a few of these (about 30) so I may get to experimenting with the sewing machine before long! :)

It's a rainy day theme and so far I've got 5 or the 8 patterned fabrics that the pattern calls for. Today I picked up the polka dots and rubber duckies ones!

"Sticky Bears are Nine Pence"

Here's a quick survey! What do quilters prefer when it comes to sticking the different layers (quilt top, batting, backing) together ready for quilting? I think my batting may be fusable, so in which case should I combine with any tape or spray, and if it isn't which is cheapest and easiest, bias tape or a binding spray?

So, more concisely:
1) fusable batting alone
2) fusable batting with either bias tape or spray
3) bias tape alone
4) adhesive spray alone

Just lingering in the coffee shop before heading to work for my last 1 - 10pm Friday night shift! After this I'll be switching to a more conventional 8:30 to 5:30 shift... though that does mean I'll probably get less quilting done! ...

I've made a start on my second quilt, sewing borders onto 2 sides of my individual squares, and that's what makes up the blocks for the pattern. So far I did 3 squares on Monday, another 3 while listening to Quilter in the Gap's latest podcast (number 9! go check it out!... I get a mention!!) ... and I've got a half dozen more squares which I might be able to get done tonight!

... and because I know some sharp eyed reader is going to point it out when I post pics... yes, I know they're rectangles and not squares! (stop nit-picking or I'll start calling them oblongs, which is a much better word than rectangle if you ask me! ;) )