Early Start

This morning I was awake around 4:00 a.m.  While I wanted to go back to sleep, my brain was already winding up and thinking about the day ahead.

Why yes, I do sleep with all my eye make-up on.  Don't you?  I mean, what would happen if there were a fire or something.  I want to look my best when those hunky firefighters arrive.

I'm not sure when, but the carpet installers will be here this morning to install carpeting in our living room and dining room.  I am so looking forward to that, but it will mean another mess to clean up.  Quite frankly, I'm cleaned out after yesterday's dust bath.

Yesterday afternoon, I spent several hours packing up the crystal and glasses from my china cabinet.  When Mike got home, he took the glass doors off the cabinet so that we could also remove the glass shelves for moving.  It was his job to unhook and remove all of the electronic components from our wall unit.  The carpet installer will be bringing a crew to help move the heavier things.  And, at this point, I'm not exactly sure who will be moving them back.  In any case, I know what I'll be doing tomorrow...putting everything back.  The carpet will be nice, but I'm really looking forward to having things get back to normal this weekend.

This afternoon, I'm meeting a fellow blogger for coffee.  She's taking possession of the bobbin clips I used to store bobbins with their associated thread spools.  They cannot be used with the bobbins for my new machine, and so I'm passing them along to Judy.  And I'm looking forward to meeting another local blogger.

For this morning, however, I wanted to show you the doll quilt that I made for the May doll quilt swap.


The theme for the May swap was "Shape Shifters" with the goal of making a quilt in a shape other than square or rectangular.  This is what I came up with:

I'm calling this quilt "A Slice of Summer", and it is from a free pattern available from All People Quilt.  It is a quilt as you go pattern.  I hesitated to even start on it because I've never done a quilt with a rounded edge like that, and I wasn't sure how successful I would be.  Also, the binding has two pieces--the green and the white--and I really wasn't sure how well I could accomplish that either.  Nevertheless, I forged ahead, and I had no problems with it whatsoever.

Then I went in search of embellishments.  I wanted to find some beads in a watermelon seed shape.  I was able to find these "buttons" although the holes are so tiny, they required a beading needle to sew them onto the quilt.

Then I decided it needed a quilt label in keeping with its watermelon theme, so I made this label by appliqueing the red half circle over a white half circle.  Then I used a green Sharpie oil paint pen to make the green watermelon rind edge.

Okay, now for the True Confessions part of my post.  If you are the Quilt Police, please just move along at this point.  Really.  Nothing to see here.

Is she gone?  Wow, that is one scary woman.  She reminds me of a teacher I had in 7th grade.  And come to think of it, I kind of remember her carrying around a seam ripper that she used to make us girls take the hems out of our too-short dresses.  (Man, did that ever piss off my seamstress mother!)  

Okay.  So there was a red binding across the bottom of the slice, and then there was the pieced green and white binding for the rounded edge.  But then, how to you sew the two together without your thread showing along with your crappy hand sewing?  At least, if you're me, your hand sewing is crappy.  To wit:

Because if you look at this, you can see that there was really no thread choice that wouldn't show.  If I chose green, it was going to show on the red and the white.  And if I chose red, it was going to show on the green and the white.  And if I chose white...well, you can see what happens if you choose white.  But since I was using white for the rest of the binding, that's what I used.  So, what to do?

Pigma Micron Pens to the rescue!!  (Watch out for their flapping capes.)

These pens have a nice fine tip.  I use them when transferring embroidery designs too.  For this application, I used them to do a "dye job" on those crappy white threads.  It isn't perfect, but hopefully, it's less noticeable.  

I've been known to use this method to fix those little teensy break-through threads when I'm sewing on a binding and get a little too enthusiastic with my needle.  Honestly, I don't know where I would be without my Pigma Micron pens.  In jail, after being arrested by the Quilt Police, no doubt.  

So that's it for this morning.  It's nearly 6:00 a.m., and clearly, I am not going back to bed now.  Time to drink my coffee and hit the shower before the carpet guys get here.  (Psyching myself up for a busy day.)