Odds and Ends of Sewing

I started Bonnie Hunter's Leader & Ender Challenge "Rail Fence" in the summer of 2017 and progressed on it for awhile.  I never really liked it and stopped working on it at some point. 

I find it a little hard to work on a leader ender project as I tend to work on whatever I am making at the time in that same fashion so rarely need to add something extra under my needle so as to not waste thread.

I decided to at least finish what I had already cut and have now sewn all the coloured strips into sets of four.  I have decided I can make a quilt which will be 8 blocks by 10 blocks which will be 48" x 60" which is a nice sized crib quilt.  I will donate it.  Black and white and colours are supposed to be good for babies to look at, as long as they don't have a seizure in the process.

In this picture I have 47 blocks completed so I just have to make the black and white checker board strips for 33 more blocks.  My camera even had a hard time focusing on this quilt which is also what I don't like about it.  It is just so busy!

Here is a close up of one block which randomly came out kind of interesting.  To me it looks like the sky at sunset over a beach from the perspective of standing out in the water and looking toward the beach.  It must be a beach on the west coast.  Well, maybe that interpretation is even stretching my imagination just a bit.

I have also been trying to decide on an additional border for Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville Mystery "Good Fortune" Quilt using up the extra red and white four patches.  I figured out if I used the four patches on point, I have nearly enough to finish borders on two sides of the quilt.  I'm not thrilled with the little sample border I made but here are the four possible ways to attach the border ranked from most liked to least liked.

1.  Border with peach side facing in and points of both borders offset.

2.  Border with peach side facing in and points of both borders in line.

3.  Border with blue side facing in and points of both borders offset.

4.  Border with blue side facing in and points of both borders in line.

What do you think?  Or should I go back to the drawing board.  Another possibility is to just add a row of the red and white four patches joined in a strip like a checker board.

I had also used up all the hexagon papers I had (I only had a sample pack of 25) and each flower needs 7 so that didn't get me very far.  I used my AccuQuilt Go cutter and a new die to make more 1" templates from last year's calendar cover and also a vacation advertisement booklet that were both thicker paper.  They turned out well but not very pretty.

I have also been binge reading Amanda Jean's "Crazy Mom Quilts" blog from the beginning in 2006.  She just retired from blogging at the end of 2018 and had been one of my favourite quilt blogs to read.  When I "discovered" her blog, I had just carried on reading in the present as she was quite prolific and blogged several times a week.  I have been missing her so had the bright idea to go back and read the ones I hadn't seen before.  You can find her here:  http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/  I'm currently up to September 2009 and I haven't come to where I started reading yet.  I'll be disappointed when I do.

My guild meeting is this Thursday so I better finalize the program details.

Touch Base Tuesday

On Saturday thirteen members of our guild met at a local quilt shop and worked from 9 am til 4 pm on making comfort quilts.  We  had a great time and half a dozen tops at least were worked on.  I'm looking forward to seeing them all finished.  

On Sunday while skyping with my quilt buddy Marilyn, I did some tidying in my sewing room and put the spools quilt I made back in October on the frame and figured out what threads I am going to use to quilt it.  I love the rainbow of threads laid out on the quilt top.  You can also see the colourful rubber floor mats I have in front of my frame to make standing easier on me.  I am going to quilt each individual spool bock with the colour of thread that is on that spool.  My quilt was based on a "Time to Sew" quilt tutorial by Jenny Doan from the Missouri Star Quilt Company  and is going to become a sewing machine cover for the machine on my frame. 

Since I was working on making one sewing machine cover, I decided I may as well also work on making a second sewing machine cover.  After all, I wouldn't want my machines to get jealous of one another.  I cut out the backing or lining fabric for a sewing machine cover for the heavy duty sewing machine I piece with.  I have been planning for awhile now to use selvages to make the sides and top of this cover so I got out my bin of selvages and starting cutting out interesting pieces.  They were jammed in and overflowing from the bin so after I cut them I had to iron them before I could sew with them.

On Monday, I started sewing the strips to the lining fabric.  I had cut mine quite narrow, most of them are only .75" wide so not much of the fabric pattern shows as I overlap them and sew as close to the finished edge of the selvage as I can.  I drew some lines in pencil on the base fabric to help me keep the strips straight.

At first I was going to include a layer of  batting but the selvages and the lining fabric turned out nice and sturdy without the batting and I also wouldn't have been able to see the lines if I had included batting.  I have a pattern which has three different cats sitting, laying or playing on stacks of fabric.  I'm going to make the orange cat laying on a bolt of fabric as the front of my sewing machine cover.  The pattern is shown here with my finished strip of selvages.  If you read the selvages there are two with "Kitty" and "Katz" in them which makes me happy.

 

The selvages really went together quite quickly and I cut way more than I needed and I think the bin actually looks fuller than before I used some so I need to think of another project to use some more up!  I know I want to try crocheting a rug with some of them, but maybe a sewing room apron made with selvages or at least accented with selvage pockets would be nice.

Last night while I was watching TV, I basted enough hexagons to make two flowers.  I sewed one together at breakfast in the bright sunlight.  

Time to get into the sewing room!  Which machine cover shall I work on first?  The spools or the cat?