Another product from a sewing day with Stacia and Deloise.

Thanks to my scrap collection I had almost enough of those tiny (one-inch finished) half-square triangles already made. I used leaders and enders to complete the 144 that I needed. Much to my surprise, as I was sorting through scraps to make the triangles I found so many that I’ve had to dedicate a shoebox just to triangles. I also had almost enough of the larger half-square triangles in my stash.

On an earlier project Stacia mentioned she had problems with a border of HSTs so I adjusted the pattern assembly so that I was sewing a portion of the border with each block. When I was ready to sandwich the project I remembered that using the small pins to baste was really hard on my fingers. Since I only had the small pins available I dug out a community quilt that was ready for quilting. I only quilted enough of it to get some larger pins for sandwiching.

I’m not happy with the quilting; it took me a long time to figure out a quilting pattern and then a long time getting into the rhythm. As my fingers have such a hard time tying thread ends and burying them I went with Stacia’s suggestion of backstitching each beginning and ending so I didn’t need to tie or bury. That worked well. As I quilted though I had some bunching around some of the HSTs; I maybe should have basted it better or done my quilting in a different order.

The binding also posed some problems. Again, because my fingers don’t work as they should, I did a machine-stitched binding. It seemed to be going well until I was almost at the end and I noticed I had missed the seam in one stretch. Because I was sewing with black thread on black it was very hard to pick the stitching out. Added to that was the fact that I was using Bottom Line thread so it was nearly invisible.

I’m glad to be moving on to the next project in the book.

UPDATE: Sold at the 2025 Guild Quilt Show – $20

This year, for our sewing days with Stacia and Deloise, we are all working on patterns from the same book – Little Handfuls of Scraps – that we bought on our sewing trip last June. Stacia is working through the patterns as they come in the book, Deloise is picking and choosing which one she wants to make and I’m going through the patterns alphabetically.

The pattern called for very tiny pieces and I knew that my hands, and maybe my mind, wouldn’t be able to handle it. So I enlarged the pattern and, except for the time it took, I was able to manage.

For me, the January sewing date overlapped into February before I finished the piece. The quilting is very simple – just straight lines on either side of the long seams.

I think it is a nice addition to the stairwell collection.

December 24, 2022

Merry Christmas!

This runner for Christy is called The 10-Minute Runner – I assure you to took a lot longer than ten minutes to complete. I don’t know why I love this cardinal fabric so much as we don’t have them in our area. I made this (except for the quilting) at one of my Thursday sewing sessions.

I’ve had this kit for a long time; in fact I thought it was a kit for the 10-Minute Runner but when I opened it up the package had been mis-labelled and I had a kit for a wall hanging. This was also done at a Thursday sewing session. I followed the lines of the trees for the quilting. I thought I had enough of the grey fabric for a border but when I couldn’t find any I added a facing instead.

This pattern for Elizabeth came from something Gail (from Thursday sewing) found online. We each made one but they looked completely different because of the placement of the lights, mediums and darks. There was a lot of quilting to do on this and it meant changing thread colours often. Elizabeth is the only one who has a table large enough to fit it.