Friday, March 9, 2018

I was late getting back from my Thursday stitching and dinner was ready when I got home. We have another person joining us for Thursday afternoon; we’re at four now and I don’t think there is room for anyone else. I spent the afternoon stitching my half-square triangles. Although I’d love to cut, press and trim them we agreed we wouldn’t work on them at home.

There were to be no more delays in getting at my quilting – today was the day. I had a quilting pattern in mind and I was ready to go. But first I waited patiently in front of my computer for my weekly 1880 Sampler block to arrive in my mail. I was late getting last week’s done and I wanted to get this week’s done before I set up my machine for quilting. With the time I had while I waited I did some prep work on my March challenge. When my block pattern finally arrived I was ready to start cutting and stitching; it was a fast block to do and I think I’m getting better at figuring out from the picture how to put the rows together.

I had to make a bank deposit today and there was a bake sale (a fund raiser for a quilting friend) I wanted to go to. And I had a book waiting for me at the library so I had to stop in there as well. By the time I was home it was lunch and it wasn’t until after I’d eaten that I was able to settle down and start quilting. I have three of sixteen blocks done so I’ve really hardly started. The three blocks I did all have the same quilting pattern but many of the blocks are different so I’m planning to do each of them a bit different. I’m using my walking foot right now and, provided I can come up with enough designs, I hope to finish it all with straight-line quilting.

It’s time to start a new knitting project and I pulled out a few patterns to choose from for this evening.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Appliqué isn’t something I particularly enjoy doing. I like the finished look of needle-turn appliqué but I seldom take the time to do it that way. For some patterns using the Blanket Stitch on my machine works but I’m not very good at zig-zags. I think that is why I was putting off starting my March Challenge project – invisible machine appliqué.

After reading over the directions one more time (it’s been two years since I took the class) I thought I was ready to start. But I knew I wasn’t going to like the process. Some of the pieces had already been cut and turned and that was where I should have started. I had the recommended thread but I’ve tried using it before and it tended to shred so I wasn’t looking forward to finding the right needle to make it work. I’d also have to change all my settings as I’ve got the machine set up for quilting.

So I decided that rather than use the machine appliqué technique I would hand appliqué the rest of the project. I got two pieces finished in hardly any time and I quite enjoyed sitting and stitching. I need to prep a few more of the pieces but this will be a good project to travel with – we’re heading over to the Island later in the month so I’ll be able to work on it either on the ferry or at our accommodation while Pat is at a concert. If things go well I may even be able to finish it this month.

So my invisible machine appliqué is almost invisible – it almost doesn’t exist (except for the two pieces I did in class).