Sunday, April 26, 2009

Like a circle in a spiral











The title refers to windmills, not pinwheels, but it's as close as I could get to a musical reference. (Did I ever tell you all that I wrote a parody of Windmills of Your Mind, called Jackets that You Find... seriously)

I experimented a bit with free-form machine quilting yesterday and didn't have much success. I mean, I finished quilting a small bag (about 12" x 12", used up the last of the Moda Portugal precut squares) and it turned out just fine. But I also broke the thread 4 bazillion times and almost threw the sewing machine across the room. Of course, much later in the day, I remembered that you have to lower the feed dogs in order to do free-form sewing... which made a rather large difference in the thread-breakage machine-throwing bad-word area.

So, I'm willing to give it another shot, with this adorable Pinwheel Baby Quilt (pattern here: http://www.unitednotions.com/MBS-pinwheel-baby-quilt.pdf , free courtesy of Moda Bakeshop). I have all of the pieces cut. Tell me, quilting mavens: is there a trick to cutting triangles with a rotary cutter? The points shift on me, and I found it almost easier and quicker to cut them with scissors. I'm using white muslin, and Moda Summer Fun Charm Pack squares. It only takes 1 charm pack for the quilt, but I used squares from 2 because I wanted to keep the Ladybug themed squares for another quilt, and I set the flag ones aside as well). I need to buy backing and binding, but otherwise, I have everything on hand (I love stash diving, even if the stash is only a couple of days old).

Anyway, I'll be working on that today. Tomorrow, I have to go back to work, so I won't get as much sewing done.

I'll leave you with this real conversation, and a reason why I am usually rumpled:

Me: (grumble, mumble, bad words as I rummage through the coat closet)
Him: What?
Me: Where the hell is my ironing board?
Him: Isn't it up in your office?
Me: Of course not. It's supposed to be in this closet. Right here.
Him: Are you sure it isn't up there?
Me: I don't iron upstairs, why would it be there?
Him: (resisting the urge to point out that I don't iron anywhere) Maybe you should check. I think it's behind your desk chair.
Me (shaking my head, but heading upstairs, and then a minute later): oh

2 comments:

Knit -University said...

hey, that could be a picture of MY office/knitting/sewing/catch-all area!!

Bunny said...

for triangles like those you could just draw a line from corner to corner layer with a the "white" square and sew 1/4 on each side of pencil line then cut them apart. this keeps them from stretching on the pesky bias edge while you are sewing. ( now I am ducking out of the way because you have probably already cut all the triangles out).