Last week I posted a video on YouTube explaining the reasons behind the most common reasons for thread breaks on your sewing machine. You can watch it here:
And then this week I sat down to sew and my thread seemed to keep getting caught underneath the needle plate and breaking. I kept playing with the bobbin, not finding an issue...getting annoyed. Until I rethreaded the top thread and everything worked again. I'm pretty sure I didn't have it seated in the tension disks right (eyeroll).
Peter Rabbit Project
After that whole fiasco, I got busy with the Peter Rabbit Project. This is a UFO project from my late mother's stash. We all had some vague memories of her declaring that she was going to make a baby quilt for the first child of each of her six grandchildren. That means six baby quilts. Being my mother, they would have to match. When I was sorting through her stash, I found one completed Peter Rabbit themed baby quilt and a WHOLE LOT of matching fabric.
The quilt top my mother made
So I figured out how much I needed for each part of the quilts, sorted through the fabric and started cutting.
I love this part :). I was a CPA. Apparently, I like creating neat layouts of numbers. You can use these numbers yourself if you have 18 fussy cut 4.5 inch unfinished squares to turn into a quilt.
There wasn't enough to make them all exactly like the first, so I had to do some guessing to figure out what her plan may have been.
A little pile for each top. Yes, I randomly decided to just make all the binding, because I felt like having something 'done' - perhaps avoiding the fussy cutting ? :)
I was dreading the fussy cutting of the illustration blocks. It seemed like it would take forever to cut the 90 blocks needed to make the remaining 5 tops. I actually have never done any fussy cutting before because of this exact reason.
Rotary cutting was a pain, even with the correct size ruler
Marking them, then cutting with scissors was a win.
Guess what. It took 2 3/4 hours. That included me first trying to use a rotary cutter to cut them, then deciding marking with pencil and then cutting with scissors was much more efficient (and comfortable because I got to sit in a chair to use scissors).
It's about 30 minutes for each quilt. About the same as the rotary cutting part.
The next top should take less time to piece - this one I had to take apart and repiece a few 4-patches that my mother had rejected...but I was running out of matching fabric!
Which made me wonder why I've avoided fussy cutting all these years!
Plus I'm really loving that I'm keeping track of my quilt hours this year - because what other neat things will I discover?
Finished Quilts
I don't consider a quilt as 'finished' until it has its binding on, so these were pieced and quilted a bit ago.
First up was an eBay top that I designed a little continuous line flower for and then practiced filling the background with a leafy fill. I'm spending about an hour of each quilting day working on my long arming skills.
Used loads of blue marker!
Back shows the quilting a bit better. I'm focusing on deliberate practice and getting better each quilt.
Second was a heart quilt that I pieced the top when I was considering creating it as a simple pattern. I eventually went in a different direction (the other direction will appear as a pattern/course before next year).
When I saw it in the pile of tops, I just had to finish it before Valentine's Day and actually hang it in my foyer. This was the one that I talked about the binding experiment in the last newsletter. I may try pressing it when it comes back off the wall because it was a flat top!
This had a mixture of ruler work and freehand. I'm leaning towards doing more ruler work because I like the preciseness of it...but I also am trying to let go of perfection when I'm doing freehand...
So that's two weeks of quilting. We also are having some floors replaced so we've been moving furniture around and painting walls. I'm hoping to finish the Peter Rabbit Project very soon so I can get started on a baby quilt of my own design.
What are you working on? Do you have any experiences to share with your fellow quilters? I'd love to share your wisdom in my next newsletter!
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