Wednesday 26 March 2014

I'm not afraid of Minky any more

 

I'm finally feeling the love again for this little baby quilt.

And tonight I had a little flurry of activity, in between cleaning the oven door and washing the filter from the oven hood (gross!), I spray basted and tacked the top to some Minky.

This is my first time using Minky, and after researching (researching = tea + google) what others have said about working with it I got a bit freaked and couldn't decide what I was going to do. Then for some reason today I decided a little spritz of spray baste and a few microtacks was the way to go.

I'm pleased to say it worked fine. I just used my walking foot and a long stitch length (2.6 on my Janome) and did some safe straight line stitching either side of the seams.

I'm quite pleased with the result, the quilt feels quite soft and snuggly with a nice drape. I'm going to give rounded corners a go when binding this, so I need to rifle through my stash to see what will work with a busy front and a plain back.

I'm also making progress on this mini....sorry, rubbish late night photo. Although I had to do some surgery on it as I ended up with sixteen points meeting in the middle. Or more accurately not meeting and most definitely not lying flat.




In the interests of full disclosure, I seemed to have purchased the 'suburbs' pattern by Cluck Cluck Sew. Somehow I've cut a couple of blocks and sewn one up, I'm loving it already.

I did manage a finish, my rainbow circle is now on the wall in our spare room, Yay me!


I'll be heading on over to Lee at Freshly Pieced to see everyone's WIP's.


Happy stitching

Tracy x

 

Wednesday 12 March 2014

A hive of inactivity.

That seems to be me at the moment, busy doing not very much.

I've got too many things a need to do and too many things I want to do. The result seems to be that I feel guilty if I do any fun sewing, so I don't do much of that.

And I have no motivation to get on with the things I should be getting on with. (All those chores that you have to do before you put your house up for sale, the ones that I've not felt the need to do in the last ten years, so why would I want to do them now?) so I'm not doing those either.

Result - paralysis, inertia, ennui, procrastination, distraction, dissembling. I'm busy doing all of those!

I have moved forward at a snails pace on some things;

My Rainbow circle is now bound and has a hanging sleeve, I'm just stitching down the binding. It should be wall-worthy in a week or so at my current pace.

I've also finished the piecing on this little top.

I planned it to be used as a car seat quilt for a new baby, just big enough to tuck around the car seat without having too much overhang. Most baby blankets are cot sized and that seems just a bit too big for carrying around with little one in those first few weeks.

I want to try and back it with Minky/fleece but I stalled when I couldn't find my spray baste. It's somewhere in the room that needs to be decorated. So instead of cleaning up and finding it, I've been out and bought another one.


I'm also playing with half-square triangles

Instead of actually getting on with the decorating/tidying/plug fixing/endless cleaning that I should be doing, I've realised a much better use of my time would be to sort thru my scraps and either organise or use them.



It's obvious really, because then they will be something usefull and decorative, like a cushion, that will enhance our home AND they won't be in a cupboard any more, so that counts as tidying. Win/win right?


So that's what I'm busy not doing - what about you?

Linking up with Lee's WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.


http://freshlypieced.blogspot.com/