It’s a good thing; it’s a bad thing

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

I guess I left my packing until too late last night because when I got to the bee this morning I had forgotten a few necessities for the thread catcher. I wasn’t alone as we were busy trading supplies back and forth across most of the sewing tables. I had the shelf liner to keep the bag from slipping, Kathy had the fusible batting, Reenie had the aquarium sand we used to fill the pincushion, Barb had the buttons, and Marlene had the long needle we needed to sew the button with. This was truly a group effort.

I am far from the fastest stitcher and, because they were steps ahead of me, several ladies were able to help me out along the way. And often one of our best quilters would stop us all and say, “Now the pattern says to glue this, but you know we aren’t going to glue it, right? This is what we’re going to do.” The bad thing about being slow though is that I didn’t complete mine at the bee. I had to come home and finish it off on my own and I’m not sure I did it correctly. If it holds together though I’ll be happy.

I wish I had added this project to “the list” so I could wipe it off the board!

 

Thread Catcher (The Abbey Bag)

I’ve seen the ladies at the Guild with these bags and thought about making one but I never got around to looking for a pattern. One of the Tuesday morning ladies had this pattern she was willing to share and so we did it as a joint project at the bee.

The bag part has a pocket on the inside. There were a lot of comments about whether or not the pocket would be of any use, but I stuck one on mine just in case. I’m not sure how easy it will be to get the thread out of the bag. Maybe I’m supposed to put a brown paper bag inside?

Click to enlarge

The top part of the piece is a pincushion.

I don’t think I will add this into my setup at home, but I will carry it with me when I go to the bees. I’m usually the one sweeping the floor at the end of the day and I can’t believe all the thread and scraps that some of the ladies leave behind. Perhaps someone (definitely not me) should volunteer to make one for each sewer!