Stop and smell the apples

I love this time of year. The mid-day temperature is just right for working outside, and the fresh air is full of the smells of ripening fruit and vegetables and hay fields. The only thing I don’t like is that it means Winter isn’t too far away. Well, we’ll worry about that when it comes. Until then, we’ll be enjoying each day as it comes.

I was between projects, so I was able to get my September Free Motion Quilting Challenge finished (with lots of time to spare until the end of the month). Quilter Paula Reid gave us our marching orders this month in the form of an eight-inch stencil design. Back in April, Don Linn showed us how to transfer an image using tulle. I didn’t have any at the time, so I used Solvy, a water soluble stabilizer made by Sulky. This time I thought I’d use the tulle, since I have a few pieces now. But I didn’t have a disappearing transfer pen. So I tried using the Solvy again. Last time I used pen, and a little bit of the ink stayed behind. I used pencil this time and couldn’t see the stencil I’d traced. So I used transfer paper like Paula did.

Like everything, using transfer paper takes practice. The one time I tried it, my motif turned out pretty ugly. This time it wasn’t bad, but transfer paper makes it hard to see where you’ve sewn if you’re travelling over the same lines. It turned out okay. But I got tired of doing my challenges on plain old white fabric, so this time I whipped together a simple eight-inch foundation-pieced block from The Quilters Cache out of some scraps and fat quarters I didn’t really like – but I like the way they turned out. I didn’t intend it, but it looks very “September-y”. It was nice to finish something, however small.

Thanks again to Paula Reid, and to Sew Cal Gal for organizing this amazing year-long series of Free Motion Quilting tutorials. Go here to see how everyone else is responding to September’s challenge.

Until next time,