Kayla’s Bernette
01/17/2015
Yesterday, I was supposed to take my Bernina in for servicing. I only had 1 thing I wanted to get done at work and I was waiting on one of my clients to provide me with the finalized version of 1 sheet before the rest of it could go out. The time frame, in my head, was that if I didn’t get a response by 10:30am then I was free to go. I had an appointment at 11am at a prospective High School for my upcoming HS student and figured to bring the Bernina in after that. But at 10:45am, I received an email from one of my staff members with the finalized version. Apparently he had been on the phone with the client for 45 minutes finalizing the version while I was thinking I was home free! 🙁 So instead of dropping the Bernina off, I dropped off Kayla’s application at another HS and went to work to get the reports out to clients before the 3 day weekend. And that left me with no time to bring the Bernina in for servicing. But I had gotten it ready and had already taken out Kayla’s Bernette to use in the meantime. It’s so cute! But I’ll have to move the machines around again since I can use my machine now. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been doing…
WIP Status:
1. Scrapitude – Working on Clue #1. I’ve got these done:
Scrapitude
Clue #1 – partial
01/17/2015
But I’ve still got to press these:
Scrapitude
Clue #1 – partial
01/17/2015
Then I can work on the final part of the clue, which is finishing the second half of that triangle. I’m enjoying these. All the pieces were cut beforehand so all I need to do is sit down and sew. And when I only have a few minutes to do anything, I can go ahead and sew up items between other things. Since we have a month to get all these done, I can sit back, do a bit at a time and enjoy the process rather than rush through everything.
Something I noticed is the importance of starching. When I first learned to quilt, I got the impression that starching was bad. I can’t remember now if that was implied or said and who implied or said it but I stayed away from it. As I took more classes and quilted more, starching became more prevalent but I didn’t use it every time… Just when I felt I needed it. There was no science about it and there were plenty of times when I should have used it but didn’t. Anyway, I was listening to a quilty podcast – I can’t remember now which one – (SORRY!) but they were talking about starching your fabric before you cut to keep it from shifting. I never did that before and I thought that was a great idea! I would have loved to do that while I was cutting for scrapitude because some of those pieces were so small, but it’s too late to do that now. However, as I press the pieces (after piecing them together, of course) I’m using starch to help it keep its shape when I piece for the next step. It’s been keeping my pieces together with very little (practically none) shifting going on. I have to say that that’s my big aha moment this week and can I get a Whoop Whoop! 🙂
Flowers and Baskets – Basically the bulk of the quilting is done on this project. All I need to do is the gold parts and the purple borders. Then I can bind it and be done with it. When I started quilting this thing last year, I first quilted the cross lines to stabilize the quilt. Then I quilted the flowers and basket blocks. I wanted these blocks to pop and not flatten them out so I quilted them using the “stitch in the ditch” method. First I used my walking foot, but I had to twist the quilt and it was difficult to maneuver so I started Free Motion Quilting it. It’s really hard but it doesn’t have to be perfect. The next blocks I quilted are the 4 black blocks. I basically did a simple big loopy meander. I didn’t want to go to fancy because then it would never get done. Next is the gold and purple parts. Luckily I have the right color threads to do those. 🙂
Happy Quilting everyone!
Melanie
I was busy sewing away the last couple of days and I was able to get the first part finished. Next step is to press and clip off any dog ears. That’s 82 triangles in that pile!
