Fuzz and Stuff

Good morning, my friends. We're just getting started on a week of nasty weather. Matthew and I were hoping to get in another walk this Thursday, but I think we're going to opt for an indoor venue instead. We're expecting plenty of wind and rain through Thursday at least. Looks like our rainy season is here to stay for now. We'll get some sunshine here and there. Mainly, it'll be wet. The kitties are bummed.

So it was a good day for sewing. Sadie was my helper cat. If she can't go outside and kill something, she might as well keep me company.

With her help, I made the last two blocks for the second row of the Stair Steps quilt. I needed one more block with a row of pink.

And I needed one block without a common color.

Since there's a color pattern to these blocks, I decided to sew them together, rather than try to lay them out properly when there are 25 to work with. Now I can start to see the pattern of colors running diagonally from corner to corner. The blocks are time-consuming to make, and I'll need three more rows before I'm finished.

So I don't have a lot of sewing to show you today. Each one of those blocks takes about an hour to make, not including the time I spend cutting all those little squares. As I'm cutting, I'm creating extras, and trying not to duplicate any of the fabrics in a single block. I'll admit there are some cheaters in there. But as I'm making them, I'm accumulating more squares for the next block, and so the cutting gets less as I work my way across a row.

Since I don't have much to show on the sewing front, it seems like a good time to share this tip with you. Maybe I'm the last one to learn about this, but here goes anyway. Working with scraps always leaves a lot of lint in my sewing machine. It seemed a good time to take off the throat plate and clean it up. Ugh...look at all that fuzz.

It's been a long time since I visited Mes Amis quilt shop in New Orleans, Louisiana. I spent a good amount of money with the friendly women in the store. As a parting gift, they handed me a few of these little "lint swabs." They're made from one of those skinny straws you find in coffee shops and bars and a folded over piece of a pipe cleaner.

These have been very handy for cleaning the lint from my machine. You can see that my yellow one above has been well used and dirty. Also, the straw has split at the top and the pipe cleaner wants to fall out as I'm using it.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I wondered if I could just use a folded over pipe cleaner and dispense with the straw. So, for ease of holding and controlling it, I folded a pipe cleaner in half...

And then I used it just the same. (I actually ended up folding it in half again. Shorter is better.) I like this because the lint clings to the pipe cleaner and doesn't fall down into the machine as I'm swabbing it out.

It does a good job of cleaning under the feed dogs and in all the other little nooks and crannies. I have a basting brush I can use for this too, but it tends to just shove the lint down into the machine rather than sweeping it out. It's the clinging power that makes this method preferable. So you can file that under the for-what-it's-worth column. I like this method. I can recommend it if you have some pipe cleaners among your supplies. 

All right so we have a grocery shopping trip ahead of us. Our list is blissfully short this week. When we get home, I'll get to work making another row of blocks for the Gumballs quilt.

These are laid out in a pattern too, and so I'm thinking I might start sewing them together as I go. Also, I'm making a gift for a friend. Since I think she reads my blog, I'll have to keep that project under wraps for a bit. Of course, I'll give you little peeks as I go.

So that's all I have for you today. Happy Tuesday, everybody. Try to stay out of the rain if you can.