Where were we?

Yes, I have been sewing, quite a bit actually. DH was traveling a lot, so we (the royal we) caught up on a few things.

Abby’s Rainbow of Quilt flavors

Almost done! Finished the quilting two weeks ago, have mad plans to bind it in the car over Easter. Still need to stitch the binding down as I did not manage to purchase enough binding fabric to get that done at Guild like I planned. I hope I get to that before next Friday. All in all, it turned out really cute.  I used Ticklish by Me and My Sister and did a spilt rail zig zag. I saw a picture of a finished one on line and thought it was really cute. When put together, the fabric was a bit busy, so I took it easy on the quilting and just went crosshatch in white thread. With all of the (not so) straight line quilting, it went very fast, think I got it quilted in three evenings of sewing.Will bind with one of the lime green fabrics.

HST

I think it stands for something dirty, but that could be because I don’t like Half Square Triangles (what HST really stands for) very much. What a hassle! But, a very fun design even if I still can’t predict the finished size of anything, even with dimensions plainly given. It ended up a wee bit smaller than I wanted, so I ended up adding a column to each end. Problem was that I had run out of white and couldn’t remember which “white” I purchased. I will tell you that it was not the same one that I bought more of, though that was not apparent until I had everything pieced. It was too late then, so if you look closely, you can tell I used two different colors of white. It’s alright, the red is so striking that you don’t notice the white so much, especially since I quilted the h-e-double-hockey-sticks out of it. I mean, made good use out of the negative space.  And used about 500 meters of white thread on it. But I gotta tell you, the Mistress is quilting like a dream machine since she was serviced up in December. Nary a squeak, squeal, or dropped stitch. No tension issues either, that must have been fixed with the new bobbin case. But back to the HSTs. I did not follow advice and square the little troublemakers up, and think it went together OK in the long run. There are a few points that are off, but overall it looks good. I think anyway. I hope to get it bound in time to pass off at the next Guild sew-in for donation. 

Hexies

I think I meant to mention this last time and then got distracted. Or something. Anyway. I found a pattern in a magazine that promised tear-free hexagon machine piecing (that's not "tear" as in rip, but "tear" as in to sob, cry, wail and otherwise be sad). I had a stack of Kate Spain Good Fortune that was screaming for such a project. The directions made my head hurt, but I wanted to try anyway. Plus, I got to purchase a new ruler. Cutting 182 hexies did not take as long as cutting the Chingaderas, thank goodness, so we were already off to a good start. I should have known something was up when I went to lay the design out and had to do it in pieces. Got all my rows laid out and stacked, then had to get started marking. The whole machine piece thing works by doing partial seams, so I use my handy fun ruler and mark little dots where it tells me to on the back of the fabric. Then when I am following the head hurting instructions, I start and stop sewing on the dots. I got the first two rows pieced this weekend and the magazine was right. There were no tears, no cursing, only confusion as to why this quilt was so damn long?!? Took me a while to figure out, but my hexies are HUGE, way bigger than the template. My fault for reading the pattern wrong, but actually a good thing to learn how to piece them on a bigger scale. I may leave it big and use it as a bed quilt for the summer when the goose down goes away. 

Speaking of goose down, my random kamikaze project of the first quarter has been a new duvet for my new comforter for my new California King size bed. I couldn’t bear the thought of paying lots of money for something I could make myself (famous last words), plus I couldn’t find something DH and I agreed upon. I really like the look of bed runners, but know that it will just end up on my floor most of the time. So I decided to piece one into the duvet cover. I purchased some paisley fabric and complementing gray solid and got to work. Promptly remembered that I don’t like working with large pieces of fabric. Plus, I had to wash, dry and IRON it all before starting. I won’t even tell you how long it took to press 10 yards of fabric. Since I had to piece the gray for the width of the duvet, I learned how to do French seams because OCQ told me that was fancy. The seams were easy enough, once I got the hang of it. Just lots of straight line sewing. But since the gray has no discernible “right” side, I got a little turned around on my second seam and had to whack it off and start over. I wanted both “right” sides finished the same. I did go the extra mile and Frenched the hell out of those seams by top stitching everything for a nice professional look. I decided that I don’t care about the bottom side and am looking for a sheet to back it with. I'll add pictures of that once it is done. 

Last But Not Least - Las Chingaderas

Got the directions for the raw edge binding at the last Guild sew-in, so I am almost ready to bind that sucker. I first need to decide what to do about the borders. Since it is machine binding, it should go fast from there and I will have a new picnic blanket just in time for the summer.