I see by the calendar on the wall it has been awhile
since I have gotten over here. Not
because I haven’t been doing anything – I am.
So what did I do?
The Blue Moves quilt – I had originally started working
on that quilt to give to my aunt on her 88th birthday. However, she passed away 5 days before. Very sad for my family. It was not hard to figure out who to give it
to instead – my cousin Frances who had taken such good care of her and my uncle
for many, many years. Blue was my aunt’s
favorite color and also Frances’.
First I had to finish it – I got it back from the long
arm quilter 2 days after my aunt passed away.
I really didn’t want to buy binding, mainly because I couldn’t afford
it, and I didn’t have enough of the fabrics left to make it. So I decided to self-bind it. The backing was plenty big enough to do
it. First, I trimmed all the excess of
the backing and batting 2 inches, then carefully folded the backing back under
so I could trim the batting to only 1 inch-
I was really careful on that step because I was so afraid
of cutting off backing where I shouldn’t!
Then I folded the backing over to the front and pressed it as I was
going-
This was further folded over to the front and I tried to
make the corners look mitered-
When sewing it on, I used my walking foot and moved the
needle over as far left as it would go, because trying to find the point to
keep the fold at to keep it all even was hard to do, and I wanted to make sure
I caught the entire folded edge in-
It didn’t come out too bad, but I did not keep it
consistent all the way around. I think
if I do this more often, I will get a bit better each time. The overall quilt didn’t look too bad- here
it is on my queen size bed-
And here is the back-
In this close up look on the back, you can see the cool
design Janet did on the quilting-
Frances really liked it and she reported back to me the
next day that it was warm- her house is very old and in need of a new heater,
so she really needed a new blanket!
Okay, so my guilt quilt – I mean Harry’s fish quilt – I was
trying to figure out how to use all the fish and reptile fabrics I had in the
stash, and I have to thank my friend Rebecca for the inspiration. We were sitting and talking when the idea
came up. I decided to make blocks of
fishbowls- I found a coloring page on the internet of a fishbowl shape I liked,
traced it on the back side of fusible interfacing, sewed it to the fabric and
turned it. Then it was fused onto the
background fabric and I stitched all around. Here are the first 6-
And a close-up of 2-
I really like how they are coming out. Right now, they
are 11” square and I realized after the first 2 I should have made them a bit
not square to allow for the seam allowance on the sides. Oh well, I will figure it out as I go. At this point, I’m not sure how many I will
need, but after a couple more are made, I will get an idea.
Other than that, I have been listing old toys on eBay
trying to make money to help pay our utility bills. My success rate is pretty
low, but at least we are getting some bills paid and keeping the roof over our
heads.
The weather is finally getting to what I like- I will
enjoy the next few months. How about
you?
Thanks for stopping by!
I really love the fish bowls! Especially the Betta and the turtle.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny you mention the Betta - I almost didn't use that. I only had a scrap that was barely big enough to sew around for it!
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