Annette

From Little Handfuls of Scraps by Edyta Sitar

My October sew-along with Stacia and Deloise was Annette – a small and relatively easy pattern.

I’m not very good at flying geese but I used my glue baste and easy press solutions and I managed to save most of the points.

In hindsight I wish I had used the same colour of gold throughout but I was using up scraps for those 9-patches.

I did some very simple quilting as the piece is only 11.5″.

Anna 2.0

Anna (from Little Handfuls of Scraps)

I hope this pattern is the hardest one in the book. Deloise struggled with it when it came up on her list and I know Stacia is also dreading it. It was my project for two months of sewing.

I tried to work the pattern exactly as the book said but I wasn’t able to get the Y-seams correct and everything was a mess. I salvaged what I could and tried hand sewing those Y-seams but still no luck. Anna went into the bin.

But I hated to give up so I came up with another plan. I would make the stars which, by comparison, were quite easy. The idea was then to appliqué the stars onto a background and avoid those Y-seams.

To some extent that worked but in order to get the right size I needed to trim off a quarter inch on each of the raw edges. I marked the quarter inch and used scissors to trim them.

The placement on the background isn’t quite right but it was good enough to add the border and do some dense straight-line quilting.

I was so happy to be done that I neglected to add the hanging sleeve to the back but I’ve stitched it on by hand and, hopefully, it will be strong enough to hold. I’ll hang it on my stairwell to replace one that I’m sending to Elizabeth.

Since it isn’t quite as the designer intended I’m calling this one Anna, version 2.0.

I think it is interesting to note that when Deloise was on an evacuation alert due to the forest fires her version of Anna is the only quilted project she loaded into her car!

Tough block

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Remember those three blocks I cut out yesterday? Remember I said I didn’t think I’d get all three done? I hate to admit that I only completed one of them.

I’m not sure if the block was complicated or if I’ve just lost “it”. The pattern called for some half square triangles so I cut fabric and made my HSTs the usual way, even though the pattern had some method of cutting a strip and them sub cutting them into triangles. Turned out that the pattern required the triangles, not the ones sewn back into squares. So those had to be reverse stitched.

In the next step I was struggling to put one part of the block together based on the small picture I had. A friend rearranged them for me and I felt certain I was on my way. I put together the second part of the block and moved on. But sadly I had run out of pieces and there were still two more sections to go.

Fortunately I took more fabric with me so I was able to cut out the pieces I needed. When I got the four corners together I realized they weren’t exactly like the picture so I did more reverse stitching to get them right. Now that I’ve had time to think about it all I needed to do was rotate the block and it would have been fine.

It was a tough block so it’s lucky it’s so pretty!

Prep work

Monday, October 16, 2023

I spent my morning working on Anna (again)! I’m happy to say she is all quilted and I have the binding attached to one side. I’m having coffee with a sewing friend on Wednesday so I’ll do the hand stitching while we chat.

I’m planning on going to sewing tomorrow and I didn’t really know what I might take to work on. I noticed in my reminders list that I had three Guild blocks of the month from last year that I hadn’t done. They haven’t continued the block of the month program this year but I know they are still collecting them. I’ve cut the fabric for all three but it is doubtful I’ll get more than two done. I’ll have a head start on my next sewing Tuesday.

On Thursday and Friday I’ll be sewing with Stacia and Deloise. On Thursday we’re going to work on a pattern from the book. I have picked out my pattern – Annette – but I haven’t looked for any fabric yet. On Friday we’re working on 3-Yard Quilts – I have my pattern and fabric picked for that one. I hope to get the cutting done for at least one of the projects on Wednesday morning.

I’m off soon to pick up a prescription. It has been rainy and windy all day but, for now, the rain seems to have stopped.