Free Motion Mavericks - Week 311 - All But Finished

So nearly finished, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.  This morning I thought I would finish the cushion cover by lunchtime.  After lunch I thought I would have it done before daylight failed.  As usual, the work took me about four times longer than I thought it would.  There were a few problems along the way, which I should have expected.  The highlight of the day was making the buttonholes.  Now the only thing I have yet to do is sew on the buttons.

This is all I had left of my favourite skirt, just a few scraps which are now in the bin.

Tomorrow I shall be buying a new cushion pad, and shall put the new cushion cover on as soon as I get it home.  I can't wait to see my favourite skirt RIP in its new incarnation.

Here goes for Week 311:-

Many thanks to Frédérique for linking up last week with her Santa in the Woods.  If you haven't seen her blog post yet, nip over now and see more.

 

If you have no free motion quilting to show, feel free to link up and show any project you like.  Here are the usual rules, but feel free to ignore them.  To keep the original emphasis, however, preference will be given to free motion quilting when featuring projects from the previous week.

If you love free motion quilting, whether you are a beginner just taking the plunge, or you have reached the stage where you can do ostrich feathers with your eyes shut and still achieve perfect symmetry, then please link up.

Remember, FMQ is FMQ, whether your machine was made last week, or it is older than your granny.

Here are the very easy and slightly elastic rules:-

1.  Link up with any recent post, ideally from the last week but within the last month, which features a free motion quilting project, whether it is a work in progress or a finish.

2.  Link back to this post in your own post.

3.  Visit as many of the other participants as possible and say hello in the comments box.

4.  The link up will remain open for five days, from midnight to midnight GMT for the long weekend, Friday to Tuesday.

So far quilters from the USA, England, Wales, Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, France, Macau, Russia, Ireland, Brazil and Sweden have taken part.  The 

first participant from each new country will get a special mention the following week.

A Little Sleeve

Every project gives a bit of entertainment value.  Turning sleeves into towers is a bit of a novelty.  This is the second sleeve for a baby jacket.  The cable is a trick for keeping track of the rows.  Every time I twist the cable, I know that is a row where I need to increase for the sleeve shaping.  Just going round and round in the same direction takes some getting used to.  When I was knitting the first sleeve I made a mistake and ended up undoing about half an inch of knitting.  It took me hours.  It is just as well the satisfaction outweighs the frustration.

Free Motion Mavericks - Week 309 - Paisley Leaves

Leaves are always my favourite design, and these fanciful paisley leaves have been a pleasure to quilt.  No two are exactly alike as I tried to vary the middles. 

I have now finished all the quilting.  It is a rough and ready job as I had some bulky seams to contend with, and I have ended up with a few rumples here and there.  I shall give it a good pressing under a damp cloth to see if the bumps flatten.  Even if they don't, I expect being regularly sat on should sort them out.

Now that I have filled all the space, the colours look perfect in our dining room.  I had been wondering who I might give the finished cushion to.  Now I have decided that this project is going to stay here at home with us.

 

Here goes for Week 309 :-

Many thanks to Chris for linking up last time with her Ripple table runner.  If you haven't seen her blog post yet, nip over now and see more.

 

 

If you have no free motion quilting to show, feel free to link up and show any project you like.  Here are the usual rules, but feel free to ignore them.  To keep the original emphasis, however, preference will be given to free motion quilting when featuring projects from the previous week.

If you love free motion quilting, whether you are a beginner just taking the plunge, or you have reached the stage where you can do ostrich feathers with your eyes shut and still achieve perfect symmetry, then please link up.

Remember, FMQ is FMQ, whether your machine was made last week, or it is older than your granny.

Here are the very easy and slightly elastic rules:-

1.  Link up with any recent post, ideally from the last week but within the last month, which features a free motion quilting project, whether it is a work in progress or a finish.

2.  Link back to this post in your own post.

3.  Visit as many of the other participants as possible and say hello in the comments box.

4.  The link up will remain open for five days, from midnight to midnight GMT for the long weekend, Friday to Tuesday.

So far quilters from the USA, England, Wales, Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, France, Macau, Russia, Ireland, Brazil and Sweden have taken part.  The 

first participant from each new country will get a special mention the following week.

Free Motion Quilting Meets Recycling

Can you see where the original stitching ends and mine starts?  My old skirt is now well and truly unrecognisable, and well on its way to becoming a cushion cover.  I have enjoyed making it up as I go along.  The original stitching has had some stitching here and there, just a bit of outlining to batten it down, and now I am off on a frolic of my own to fill up all the blank space.  Doing all the fat fancy paisley-like leaves has been an absolute joy.  However, it has been heavy going in parts because I have had to contend with seams in the skirt fabric, and have ended up with a few rumples.  Also, because the backing fabric is a synthetic mix, it has a tendency to resist, and refuses to glide as easily as pure cotton.  Of course, as soon as I type this, I realise I have forgotten to put clingfilm on the bed of the machine, which is my tried and tested trick to help the work glide more freely.

It is ages since I did a free motion project.  What better way to start again than with an old skirt backed with offcuts of curtain lining?  Shopping isn't easy at the moment, so I am taking the opportunity to use up items that are cluttering up the house. 

Free Motion Mavericks - Week 307 - Picking Up The Threads

At last, I am getting back to a neglected project.  This is my old skirt, which I cut up and prepared for quilting.  Actually, I'm not sure about the quilting part.  I think it might not need wadding, being a fairly thick woollen fabric, but it certainly needs to be attached to a backing fabric, so that means plenty of free motion designs to fill the gaps.

I have always used Gutermann's Sulky Cotton 30 for free motion quilting, but I have got two or three reels of Cotton 12 in my box.  When I did my last landscape I bought a supply of stout needles, and it occurred to me that they might be ideal for the thicker thread.  The two reels on the right of the photo are Cotton 12, and just from the photo you can see how much better they show up against the background.  It's raining (again!), so today is a good day to stay in and start experimenting.

It's time I started some serious sewing again after all that knitting.

Here goes for Week 307 :-

Many thanks to Deana for linking up with her wonderful scrappy Trail Mix quilt last time.  If you haven't seen her blog post yet, nip over now and see more.

 

 

If you have no free motion quilting to show, feel free to link up and show any project you like.  Here are the usual rules, but feel free to ignore them.  To keep the original emphasis, however, preference will be given to free motion quilting when featuring projects from the previous week.

If you love free motion quilting, whether you are a beginner just taking the plunge, or you have reached the stage where you can do ostrich feathers with your eyes shut and still achieve perfect symmetry, then please link up.

Remember, FMQ is FMQ, whether your machine was made last week, or it is older than your granny.

Here are the very easy and slightly elastic rules:-

1.  Link up with any recent post, ideally from the last week but within the last month, which features a free motion quilting project, whether it is a work in progress or a finish.

2.  Link back to this post in your own post.

3.  Visit as many of the other participants as possible and say hello in the comments box.

4.  The link up will remain open for five days, from midnight to midnight GMT for the long weekend, Friday to Tuesday.

So far quilters from the USA, England, Wales, Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, France, Macau, Russia, Ireland, Brazil and Sweden have taken part.  The 

first participant from each new country will get a special mention the following week.

A Picture for Sunday - Grazing in Gossamer

 Really magical gossamer appears occasionally in autumn.  One afternoon earlier this month it carpeted every field for miles around, and shone against the sun.

Odd Jobs

Irritating odd jobs tend to get put off, sometimes indefinitely, or forgotten.  This week I decided to clear three out of the way.  First, a transformation, of a denim skirt that my daughter grew out of years ago.  All it needed was a length of old picture cord, a seam across the bottom...

... and now I have a brand new peg bag.

Next came a repair job to a cardigan.  The petersham inside the front edges was disintegrating, so I had a rummage through my bag of green scraps and found two strips of cut off selvedge in exactly the right shade.  This was a minor miracle in itself.  It is years since I kept strips of selvedge.  These days they go straight in the bin.  The strips were long enough to bind the front edges and make the cardigan wearable again.  It had got to the stage where I was nervous about putting it in the washing machine in case the buttonholes came out ruined, but now it is repaired it can have its long overdue wash.

And finally, a tie-back for a curtain.  This curtain hangs between the kitchen and the dining room, and is only closed in the winter when it gets draughty in the evenings.  We don't want to put a hook in the wall because the plaster is a bit old and fragile, so I have made a strip to wrap around the curtain.  At one end there is a buttonhole and a button, and at the other end, two buttonholes.  

I sewed a button to the curtain...

... buttoned the tie-back onto it, wrapped it round, and the two buttonholes at the other end go over the two buttons.  Easy.  Why didn't I think of this when I made the curtain ten years ago?