PugMom Quilts!: Stupid Sewing Tricks

Monday, March 21, 2016

Stupid Sewing Tricks

Must have forgotten to wear my special hat yesterday while I was sewing.

On Saturday, Marion, Joannie and I celebrated National Quilting Day with an orgy of fabric buying. Ostensibly, it was a celebration of my birthday. In reality, Joannie had found two great sales to go to. I took NO photos on Saturday but if you're interested, I could possibly be bribed with Cadbury Eggs to post a few photos of my new fabric acquisitions.

On Sunday, I slept late and then I sewed in my pajamas most of the day. After spending 20 minutes looking for the project I intended to work on, I gave up and trimmed up Sam's quilt, which came back recently from my friendly machine quilter, Terri. After I trimmed off the excess batting, I very carefully separated the fabric and batting into usable larger fabric pieces, scraps for my friends Janet and Sandie, and pet pillow stuffing. I almost never do this, so I was quite pleased with myself. I also found the leftover backing pieces from my brother Jeff's Star Trek quilt that I gave him last October and did it to that fabric as well.

Sam's quilt. This pattern is from Jo Kramer's book, Country Girl Modern.

This is the back. The middle which looks like three pieces of fabric is actually one piece. I found this in the remnant pile several years ago at Sewphisticated not knowing what I would use it for but it was too crazy to pass up. The fabric designs are flames, flowers and frogs.

I have the binding made and ready to put on Sam's quilt but I decided to put it on another day. I still hadn't found the project I was looking for, so I opened the box of four fleece blankets that I had pinned together in January when I had a large table to work on.

I started sewing together the fleece and minkee blanket for my friend MaryKate, who is my birthday twin (we share the same birthday). She likes the Baltimore Ravens, so I used Baltimore Ravens fleece and purple minkee for the back. If you haven't used minkee before, it is soft and delicious to cuddle with but it slips and slides when you are sewing!

After I finished sewing the right sides together, I turned the blanket right side out and got ready to top stitch it and close the opening. While I was trimming it, I managed to cut a large hole at the top of the blanket. The minkee moved underneath while I was trimming the fleece. I did NOT take a photo. After saying several choice swear words, I moved the seam line over and resewed the hole closed.

Here's the finished blanket without a hole in it. Everything looks good on my purple bench!

Finally I found the bag with the project in it that I had been looking for. I am making a purple patchwork Chubby Charmer tote bag for Anna, one of the girls that works at my veterinarian's office. I had finished most of it at our late January quilt weekend at the Cape. I top stitched the handles and attached them to the bag. I assembled the bag. Then I went to put the velcro on the sides. (You can collapse the sides with the velcro and make the bag smaller, it's a nice feature.) I've made this bag at least a dozen times. The first two pieces of velcro went on without a problem. I put the third piece of velcro on and when I looked inside the bag I had somehow folded the lining over and made a wrinkled mess. Again, NO photo, but more choice swear words were uttered. I forced myself to unpick the stitches and resew the velcro. What a pain! But I couldn't leave it looking like that. Fortunately, the fourth piece of velcro went on flawlessly.