Saturday’s dinner was “empty the fridge,” so no major cooking was planned. I like days like that. More time for sewing!

I started the day with giving my machine a mini Spa Day – clean & oil the bobbin area, changed the needle & wound a couple of bobbins. Then did some light cleaning on the ironing board & cutting table.

Ready. Set. SEW!

Friday I received a package from Fabric Cafe with two new 3-yard patterns to test. I’m excited to see what is planned for these new patterns.

My first steps were to review the patterns, print my cutting & assembly notes (large print for my aging vision), and iron the first 3 yards.

While I can’t share any progress pictures, I will say my weekend was filled with ironing, cutting and chain piecing HSTs and Strip Piecing.

A Quilting Failure & a Little Help from Some Friends

I usually only quilt small projects on my Domestic Machine and have my Longarm Friend do her magic on bigger projects.  I should have NOT tried to do it myself.

This quilt is throw size and used panels on both the front and back. This basically resulted in a quilt with TWO fronts. That should have been a Red Flag right there.

First problem was the directions for making the back resulted in the same size as the front and I did not initially catch that. Normally I would have squared the front & made the back larger, adding 4″ all around to fit on the longarm machine.

I could have added muslin all around the back for the extra needed to attach it to the longarm machine. With the seam at the edge of the back it may have caused problems for the longarm quilter matching front to back.

I just thought I could do some simple straight-line quilting. BUT….what looked good on the front looked sloppy on the back! And what looked good on the back looked bad on the front. So I put the quilt on a Time Out while I thought about it.

I woke up at 3 AM one night and decided I would un-quilt it and rebuild the back making it the right size. I would then have my Longarm Quilter do some edge-to-edge quilting.

So I took this to our Thursday Stitching Group to work on it. My wonderful quilty friends agreed with the plan and all jumped in to help. We had a party with Jack (the Seam Ripper).

We spent nearly 2 hours ripping out most of the quilting I had done. Then I finished the rest at home.

I’ll talk with my longarm quilter and may re-make the borders on the back.

---

Looking Ahead – Just a Teaser. Mark your Calendars for something special coming October 11-25. Start thinking Fall. More info soon.

---

Hope you are making progress on whatever you are stitching this week!

Happy Stitching!

Quilt Mouse