Today I began with a list:
finish of the last set of placemats, oven mitt and trivet
buy wadding and backing for the strong quilt and Precious Hearts quilts
piece the 6 inch squares for the Precious Heart quilts
make two European quilted pillowcases to match the quilt on my bed
finish and bind the strong quilt
So..................
what did I get done?
Firstly, I had to research how to machine quilt.................there are sooooooo many tutorials out there!
I found out that:
you need to relax while you machine quilt ......really? Has this woman actually done this backbreaking task? Her suggestion? Drink a glass of wine before you start. Hasn't this woman read or heard about not drinking whilst operating heavy machinery?
So, I managed to fit the new free motion quilting foot thingo to my new Janome. Found the 'feed dogs' thingamijig and 'dropped' them.
Put on my 'quilting gloves' ( checked these out in the patchwork shop - too much money for maybe one failure) saw they had sticky things on the finger tips and had a pair of gardening gloves that looked pretty similar at home- so they are now my quilting gloves- considering gardening has never managed to be on my agenda and I don't even have a 'live' plant pot to care for ( do have a dead one that needless to say was not looked after and never met the gardening/quilting gloves).
I finished the plcemats pretty quickly. Thry look lovely.
I went down the street early to get my wadding.....managed to fond some at Patchwork on the Bay. David Bates, the owner is always interested in what I am sewing so I told him I was piecing and quilting the Precious Hearts pram/bassinette quilts today. He gave me two metres of backing fabric that a rep had given him today to use for the backs. Thank you David from all the beautiful babies with heart disease. There is enough for three quilt backs and the bindings so I came home and pieced an extra top.
I finished piecing the 6 inch blocks I cut when I was cleaning out the sewing room. Most of them are pretties left over from making dresses and quilts for my grandbabies.
I did learn today that a good way to baste small quilts and blocks was to use spray adhesive-- very cool and worked. Thank you for that wonderful tip.
I decided it was time to get into the machine quilting. I decided to try a sample first. best tip amongst all the blogs was to pull the bobbin thread through before starting. After clogging the thread twice decided this must be a good tip and worked perfectly after that.
I used a big swirly design to quilt each block. Not sure if I imporeved.
One of the problems with all the tutorials I read was the RULES!!!!!
RULES
Now, once there are rules then there must follow guilt for breaking them - just another thing in my life to go along with being a pathetic cook, lousy plant pot looker afterer and a host of other things.
One of the rules is that you should never cross a line you have already sewn - really????????????? crossing the line? well I didn't manage to avoid that a couple of times but just sew (sic) you know, I tried.
Came to putting the blocks together I had to go back to the tutorials to check out how to quilt as you go - again, many many videos and tutorials - clearly I need hands on teaching here. Could not seem to make it happen. Eventually got there but trying to get the points together with all those layers was a nightmare- had to go back to old fashioned tacking. I did try to 'debulk' my seams. I am an English teacher so metalanguage is important to me. 'Debulk'? I think they apply that word on medical shows to tumour removal.
I did try 'debulking' and all the other hints but the whole task was onerous.
Finally got the quilt together so now just have bindings to sew on. Should have it finished tomorrow and will post a pic.
Now I am the master of machine quilting ( hiccup loudly here as one should imagine I was relaxed from drinking while I did it- except I don;t think Chai tea counts) .
I decided to put a little owl applique on the back of the pram quilts.
Here is one finished. I will finish the other two tomorrow and send them off to Precious Hearts.
So, didn't get everything on the list done but covered a fair bit so am pretty happy with my day. I will be sad to see the end of school holidays and sewing.
Tomorrow is officially my last sewing day of the hols. So sad.
More pics tomorrow.
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