Wednesday, April 21, 2021

A Sewing Project That I Don't Recommend

 



I was doing some sewing the other day and look what happened.  I got my finger under the sewing machine needle.  Really, really stupid, MissesStitches!!!  I was pulling the threads out from under the foot, something I've done with my finger for many, many years.  But now I'm using a stiletto to do that!

The needle went into the pad of my finger and came out right near the outer end of my nail.  I put a tissue on it right away, but it didn't really bleed very much.  It sure hurt, though!  So I put a bandaid on it.  Then, later when I took the bandaid off to replace it, because of my aging, thinning, deteriorating skin, the bandaid adhesive pulled a small patch of skin off my finger!  That really made me mad!  So now I've reverted to gauze and paper tape.  This is working well, but obviously it's not waterproof.

Anyway, don't get complacent about your sewing machine like I did.  They are power tools.  I've also noticed that I'm not always careful enough about taking my foot off the pedal while I'm doing something else, like raising the foot a little to readjust some fabric with a stiletto or "purple thang."  So I'm trying to pay a little more attention now.

Monday, April 5, 2021

A Baby Quilt

 I've been quilting for the past few days on a baby quilt for my guild.  We need to "fill our merchandise" to sell at the next Art in the Redwoods, and then Winter Wonderland.  These are the two main fundraisers for our guild (and for other organizations as well as the parent organization, Gualala Arts Center).  I had some fabric in my stash that had multi-colored squares printed on it, and I bought it with the idea of making it into a baby quilt.  So I pulled it out, got it sandwiched with a cute "kiddy print" on the back, and am now doing the quilting.

I don't pretend to be a very good free motion quilter, but I think that the more I practice, the better I should become, right?

This first design is simple leaves, all over and all different directions.  It was fun!




I believe this was a design that I found in a Leah Day free motion quilting book.  I drew one line wavy from corner to corner, then drew a straight line between the other corners.  Then simply followed the line, and echoed it.  I like this design a lot.



This kind of looks like a star to me, or a flower.



And some plain old stippling, which I really like, now that I've finally learned how to do it!



Several years ago, in my free motion quilting attempts, I could do "pebbles" quite well.  Now, however, something has changed, and I find myself pebble-challenged.  But I thought I'd try pebbles again.  The bigger pebbles are definitely easier for me than the small pebbles.



Below you see a square with a very simple wavy line going across it.  Also, you can see that these squares are about 5" square.



I still have several squares to quilt.  I'm quilting every other square, leaving the alternating squares blank.  I thought the quilt might get too stiff if it was quilted in every single square.