When in doubt - read and FOLLOW the instructions!

My favorite day of the week - oh heck - I like them all. But it was Sit n Sew yesterday and we had a blast and I got a lot done. Not necessarily a lot, but I accomplished something that had been sitting here for a while.

We were a mighty group of 6 and we produced! Let's have a look..........


Last month, Claudette was working on a small bag. It's called the Lacie Bag by Border Creek Station. She added a set of handles to the bag.

Claudette's Lacie Bag

 And what's in the bag? Why that would be her mini iron! If you don't have one of these irons - you should get one. I think everyone in my sewing groups has one. While I love using a BIG iron, this one works if you have a lot of small pieces to iron. Some people get themselves established at their sewing station and make it an ironing and cutting station as well. NO - I need to move so I like to get up to go to the big iron. But don't worry - I have not one, but two small travel irons and one of them looks like this.

Great carrying case for the mini iron

 To make it even better, she lined it with the ironing material so she can put a slightly hot iron in there and no danger of scorching or burning the inside of her bag.  Very clever!!!!

Ironing board fabric to line the Lacie Bag

Diane was working on some table runners - I think it was table runners. Then she pulled out a quilt that she was going to add a border too. When I was at The Quilting Barn last week, I found an amazing fabric and I thought of Diane (and also Paula) when I bought it. I ended up selling it to Diane!  But I know that there is more at The Quilting Barn. I'm sure they ship if you want some - it's very cute. 

Farm words

 And before it left my house, it was cut up into borders for the quilt! 

The fabric was already cut up ready to be sewn on a border

Claudette was busy binding quilts. I think this is a placemat. She bound it by machine. Done!

Placemat - done!

 And then she had two doll quilts. Those are also bound by machine and DONE!

Doll quilts - DONE

 I would like to interject a note here. I was showing some stuff yesterday that I've made and posted on QUILTsocial. While I'm working with the Husqvarna Viking sewing machines and am reviewing those machines, I'm also making tutorials and projects that get posted on that blog. If I spent the entire posts blabbing on about what the machine can do - you'd be bored to tears. So I make stuff up and do silly things as I'm reviewing to educate and entertain you.

So when I mention on my blog that you should go to QUILTsocial - you MUST go to QUILTsocial to read what I've created. Case in point - I've written about 12 articles on binding a quilt. All of them have different takes on the binding process. If you haven't read them - here's the link to them. There are a few posts by some of the other bloggers that pop up - not sure why that is - something with the search engine no doubt. But there are many, many other super cool ideas. The best part?  It's all free. You can either bookmark the pages for future reference or you can download the PDF on your tablet and then you have complete control over when you can refer back to the posts (although they are always on the website). I would NOT print them. They are very lengthy and there's no need.

Spread the word about the information on QUILTsocial. Make all of us bloggers famous!!!

I'm in the process of putting together the outline (and projects) for the next week at the end of January. If you have ANYTHING that you would like to learn or know more about or a project (I'm really big into recycling and I already have one recycling project on the list) - drop me an e-mail and I'll see if I can work it into the schedule.

Back to Sit n Sew. Helen Anne finished up this wall hanging which is destined to be a cardholder. Those "tree" triangles are actually pockets!

Wall hanging

Then she worked on this wall hanging. I LOVE that film strip border.

Film strip border on half of a panel

But we had a good laugh about this panel. It's from the Northcott collection - Joy to the World. Have a look at the panel (it's actually running yardage) - do you see what Helen Anne saw?

Northcott Joy to the World running yardage

 Yes - it's a story board! I had no idea! So she had to be careful how she cut it up so that the story wasn't out of sequence. It goes from left to right on each of the three rows. So the two pieces will have to hang side by side in order to make sense. Rather than make one long wall hanging by taking the right half and adding to the bottom of the left half.


Pauline came with some precut squares and two fabrics. What to do with them?  We settled on an easy frame around the blocks and she's going to add a bit of black between the blocks to set them off. It's going to be awesome. I love the coloring of the blocks.

Pauline's simple blocks with a frame

Pat was tucked in the corner but sewed up a storm. She started off by using my serger to serge the edges of this nutcracker tapestry. Now it can be used as a placemat. That was easy. I didn't take a picture of the serged seam, but gosh - that serger works like a charm!!!! That's all she did with it - serge the edges. It looks great.

Nutcracker tapestry placemat

 Then she made four placemats. All finished up with top stitching around the edge.

Four placemats by Pat

 And then Pat went back to her 150 Canadian Women Project. Actually, she started with this project. And she accomplished another 8 blocks. Awesome job!!!!

150 Canadian woman blocks 

I was sewing something and needed to use the seam ripper. My regular ripper is tucked away in a project bag that I couldn't find quickly. So I dug through a drawer of tools and found this. Hmm - this ripper looks sketchy and feels sketchy. And YEP - it was sketchy! The blade was so dull that I doubt I could have cut butter with the darn thing!  It's now residing in the garbage!  This was some freebie from somewhere or included in some cheap kit. Remember - you need to have GOOD tools always to work with. Throw the junk out!

Bogus seam ripper

 Even though I should have been working on the magazine quilt, I decided to work on Audra's quilt. I really want to try and get them done before Christmas. Two are in the process of being sewn together and then there will be 4 to quilt. None are huge.

Earlier in the week, I had traced the applique shapes onto this Heat n Bond Featherlite. I had run out of my usual brand (Steam a Seam) and this is what I had purchased somewhere. Did I read those instructions? Of course not!

Instructions for Heat n Bond

I fused the Heat n Bond to the back of the applique stars. Cut them out and then attempted to fuse them to the background. Nothing - well not much. The darn stars wouldn't fuse or wouldn't completely fuse to the background. Hmm. This could be a problelm and I refused to redo them. I got out my glue stick and very carefully glued them in place and then even more carefully, did a satin stitch around the stars. No one would know that I had trouble.

Star blocks - DONE

 However before I proceeded to the next block, I thought I had better read those instructions. AHA  - NO STEAM and iron for a mere TWO seconds. OH - I had literally burned up all the glue with my usual fusing method!  I fused the next two blocks as per the instructions and all the pieces stuck to the background exactly like they were supposed to!!!!   SO - just a warning - if you use this FEATHERLITE product from Head n Bond - no steam and a light touch. And it works!

One more applique block - ready for stitching

I was on a roll and all the shapes were traced so I got the last block completed as well. All the applique is in place - it needs to be stitched. That's a job for the Sunday Sit n Sew. 

The last block is almost done!!!!

Here's the quilt! At least all the blocks are in place - a little more work and the top can be completed. There's applique in the border, but I'm not going to do that. Hey - there's a limit to what work I want to do out of the goodness of my heart.

The blocks are almost done!!!

I did manage to get a wee bit more completed on the ender/leader project. Yeah!!! That's my long term project so it could take a long time to finish it. I'm OK with that. 

Ender/leader project

At the end of the day, the scrap basket looked like this! Not nearly as full as it was the last time, but it's a good start to the next cat bed.  And Pat brought me a bunch of pillowcases so I'm good to hit those bags of scraps that are hiding in the cold room.

The scrap basket

We had fun at the guild meeting last night. We got to know the guild members a little bit better and we learned a few things in the trivia questions that I had prepped.

Just checking out the calendar - I have six customer quilts to quilt, four of Audra's quilts to finish, three classes to teach, two Monday sewing days, one Sit n Sew, one guild meeting and one magazine quilt to finish before the end of the year. Yeah -- there really is a light at the end of the tunnel. Except that I ran out of fabric for one of the fabrics in the magazine quilt so I'm on a hunt. Just got a call and YES - she has the fabric and it's close by. There is a quilting angel on my shoulder!!!!

On that note, I'm out of here.

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!