BLOG 297

BLOG 297

Congratulations to those who noticed that I had skipped from Blog 295 to 396! And many thanks to Chris for letting me know! Perhaps I was celebrating my birthday a bit early in the day. And so it’s a week later now and I feel not the slightest bit different so I will stick by the old adage that you are as young as you feel. Although my body tells me differently if I choose to believe it, I feel positively juvenile in my head and that is how it will remain. Working with bright colours suits my present temperament so I have continued with the scrap quilt this week, snatching a half hour here and there to add more squares to the pile.

               Scrap quilt

And this really is a scrap quilt. I got to the stage this week when I had no pieces of wadding large enough to cut 7” squares so I got out my bag of bits.

                 Wadding scraps

I started to sew smaller strips together to make larger strips using a walking foot and a wide zigzag. I had to make sure that the edges to be sewn were straight so that I could butt them together without over-lapping which would cause a ridge.

               Zigzag

After a bit of self-satisfying effort, I had emptied a bag of wadding scraps and made them into usable squares. Smug or what!

              Wadding squares

Another sense of achievement has been gained by being determined to empty all those maddeningly small lengths of threads from the bobbins. I have 4 of these storage rings so you can imagine the quantity of bobbins I have in use at any one time!

               Bobbins

After a few sessions I have liberated lots of bobbins. When I have had a clear-out of threads in the past, I have used the bobbins on the top of the machine as well as in the shuttle. This was a step too far as I was forever running out of thread from one place or the other. Using a full reel on top and only having to change the bobbin in the shuttle periodically is a better way of working. It always surprises me how far bits of left-over thread will sew.

               Liberated bobbins

And here is a potential layout of the blocks so far. Seeing it through a camera lens I am aware straight away that there is a strong line along the lower edge where light squares goes into medium rather than into medium light squares. A lot of refining is needed before joining it up. Onwards and upwards!

              Potential layout

Aside: I am mad that I didn’t think to add a square of backing fabric behind each square of wadding when I was sewing the strips on. Then all I would need to do is join the squares together with strips. Now I have to think of an easy way to get round this.