Friday Furball – could be worse

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A peek at the Fair

My schedule at work has changed, this past week, and boy am I mixed up. It’s thrown everyone in my office for a loop.I have a weekly deadline, which has been more or less the same for the past 10 years. Last week’s change in timing was major and now everyone's struggling to adjust. It’ll take a little while, but we’ll do it. It’s a good change and means that I’ll be working only five days per week now, instead of seven. What am I going to do with all of this free time?

Our annual Fall Fair was held last week, and that means quilts! Once again I was expecting to have something entered for judging, and once again I didn’t get anything finished in time.Happily, this was not the case for everyone and there were some really cute quilts entered.The pictures in this post are all from the Fair (and none of them are mine!)/

I know some of the quilters, but the name on the entry card remains covered unless they win a ribbon. I guess it’s supposed to protect the feelings of the ones who didn’t win, but I think they’re all winners and I’d love to know all of their names.

I haven’t started quilting Plan B yet; and the latest bag is still waiting for handles. Once I get my new schedule sorted out, maybe my projects will get finished faster. But right now there’s lots of yardwork to finish up while we still have some decent weather.

Until next time,

The Friday Furball – Cat in a bag

Plan B

The quilt formerly known as the Mexican Star Quilt is now known as the Plan B Quilt. That’s because I kept running out of material and had to substitute with something else. Or I’d change my plan part way through it. But, a year and a half later, I finally have it pin-basted and ready (or not, here I come) to quilt. Just need some thread, and I’ll be getting that this weekend!

Until next time,

One of those days…

when I should have quit after the first mistake because nothing went right after that. Monday was a holiday here which meant I only had to spend a couple of hours in the office. So I spent most of the day at the sewing machine. With my seam ripper.

I’ve been working on a bag for the past couple of weeks – alternating between it and my “Mexican Star” quilt, which I’ve renamed the “Plan B” quilt – from a magazine pattern which has some interesting features that I’d like to try. And, as usual, I added a few of my own. It has side gussets and a flat bottom, and a recessed zipper. And binding all around the edges. What can I say, it looked simple.

I added an easy patch pocket on the front and also a simple zippered pocket. For the patch pocket, I put together a simple little paper-pieced pinwheel. Looked pretty good until I went to stitch it down. I’ll have to work on making that look neater. Then I put a zippered pocket in above it. Easy. I used the instructions that I found here. Just make a welt pocket and sew a zipper in. Well, my welt construction was way neater than my last two attempts. It probably would have looked great as a welt pocket, but as a zipper pocket not so good. The opening was too wide or the zip was too skinny and I missed half of it with the needle. I even taped it down before sewing, but it didn’t help. I finally had to resort to re-stitching it all with an ugly industrial-sized blanket stitch. It’s on there for good now.

There is one thing that I m really proud of here, and that’s this pleated pocket. Second one I’ve made, first one that turned out well, thanks to this tutorial. It really was easy!

I used the opportunity to practice my free motion quilting on something I might actually use rather than another practice sandwich. And I have Plan B in need of quilting pretty soon, so I’m thinking about how I want to quilt it. My participation in SewCalGal’s Free Motion Quilt Challenge this year has boosted my confidence in free motion quilting. Now when that little voice in my head says “time to ruin the quilt”, I kick its scrawny little butt to the corner and go about my quilting. Whether I’ve gotten better isn’t the question – the fact is, I enjoy free motion quilting now. So I practice more. And yes, I get better. What I’ve done here looks pretty wonky, but it’s improving.

Pinks and grays aren’t my preferred palette, so I don’t have much in the way of thread. The only pink or gray thread I had was some gray Gutermann’s silk. I didn’t have much luck with it last time I used it. And I didn’t have much luck with it this time either. Gutermann’s polyester is my Go To thread. I use it for everything and would buy it by the caselot if I could. Even the silk thread – it showed up really nicely against the cream fabric, but it kept breaking (see the first picture on this post). I was using a new 80# top stitch needle. I’m sure if I’d fiddled with the tension for a couple of hours I might have gotten it to work right, but I’m not at that stage yet. Instead I just trimmed my thread, rethreaded my machine and started again. It’s practice. Backed myself into a few corners, stopped and started again. Easy.

Now I’m working on the binding. I’ve spent twice as much time unstitching the binding as I have sewing it on. The second time I stitched it on, I zigzagged it real good, so it’s taking an extra long time to unstitch it. If you don’t hear from me for a while, it’s because I’ve gone cross-eyed.

Until next time,

The Friday Furball – Interwoven

Useful things

I picked this up a few weeks ago from one of the local thrift stores. It looked like a napkin holder and though we already have a napkin holder, we don’t have a genuine custom made wire napkin holder in the shape of a kitty. Have you figured out yet that I’m a sucker for anything with a cat on it? Besides, it was only a buck. It’s been sitting on what used to be the dining room table (until piles of scraps and other sewing paraphernalia made eating there impossible) since I brought it home. I’ve had to endure at least two “Why do we need another napkin holder?” from my partner, and although the space to store the napkins in is rather small, I really like it.

I was cutting some fabric the other day and wondering where to put my ruler so that it wouldn’t get coverer by the encroaching piles of scraps when I spotted the kitty. Purrfect! It works beautifully, like it was made just for my ruler. Everything has its purpose.

I’ve been working on a few projects these past few weeks, and neither seems to be getting closer to completion. Tonight I reached the point where I need to do some quilting on one of the projects, so I get a chance to practice my FMQ some more. It’s not looking very good at this stage, but this is a part of the bag that won’t really be seen. Hopefully it’ll be looking better by the time I get to the front panel!

Full Moon tomorrow morning – exact around 7 am Pacific Daylight Time at 8 Pisces (and the Sun in Virgo) – water and earth signs. At the same time when the Full Moon is exact, the Moon and Sun will be in good aspect to Mars (5 Scorpio) and Pluto (7 Capricorn), giving sustained momentum to the Full Moon. Qualities which would include harvesting that which duty and devotion carefully sowed.

Until next time,