Fun First

Today I put serious household business on hold so that I could spend some time sewing. The goal for today was to finish up the orange Four Fabric Forest that still needed quilting and binding.

Before I did that, however, I spent some time on serious sewing business. For one thing, I saw this genius strategy on someone's Facebook post. Since I am forever losing my scissors, especially when I'm quilting, I decided to give this a try. I purchased some stick-on plastic hooks at the grocery store yesterday. My options for Eliza were limited, and so I stuck them where you see them.

I'm not sure those aren't going to get in my way, and so I might end up moving them...or removing them. The hooks came in packages of four, and so I put the other two on the wall next to Big Bertha.

Of course any organization strategy is only as good as the user's dedication to actually using it. My current method is to allow the scissors to land where they fall. We'll see if I can force myself into the habit of actually hanging them up when I'm not using them.

The other thing I saw recently was a video about using templates and rulers for free motion quilting. The person in the video kept talking about "sticky tape" to help keep rulers and templates from slipping on fabric. I investigated this further and found this Safe Way Traction 1" X 60' Foot Roll of CLEAR Rubberized Anti Slip Non Skid Safety Tape. It's intended for placement on slippery stairs or sidewalks. I wasn't at all sure it would work for my purposes, and so I read the reviews of the item, and found this comment:

Perfect. I ordered the smallest roll I could get, but it was still way more than I needed. Not to worry. I'm sure we can find lots of uses for this stuff in our rainy climate. In any case, I stuck that to one of my quilting rulers and, let me tell you...that puppy will not slip now.

It was impossible to avoid the reflections in that image, and so I can't give you a better image. I was a little worried about the tape making ruler markings difficult to see, but that turned out not to be a problem. I stuck it on all my rulers, and I'm thinking it would work well for cutting rulers too.

So with those items taken care of, I got to work quilting the orange Four Fabric Forest. For the orange sections I used a swirly string of pearls sort of thing...that's a highly technical quilting term. 

For the trees, I used the fabric as a guide and put a kind of swirly wood grain curly-cue thingy wherever one appeared on the fabric. It's a little hard to see.

It might be easier to see from the back.

It took about two hours, and then the quilting was finished. 

I poured myself a cup of coffee, turned on my audiobook, and then got to work hand sewing the binding. An hour later, that too was finished.

Here's how it looks from the back.

So, next up I want to make the iron caddy for my travel iron. There is a class at the end of April I'm planning to attend, and I want this finished by then. My travel iron is always too hot to put away when I'm finished with a class. The pattern for this caddy came with some heat resistant fabric lining. I'll be using my own fabrics for the outside, but this seems like a handy little package to me.

You might recall that I saw this made up at the quilt shop I visited in Reno, and I purchased the pattern then.

So, it's way after noon now, and I've spent the whole day playing. I'm woefully short on steps if I'm going to make my 10k, and so it's time to get moving. I hope you're having a lovely day!