Crooked Sewing Adventure

As an active member of my ASG chapter (and president) it seems like most of my sewing is craft projects to learn new techniques or reinforce old ones. While I long to spend more time on garments, in reality, it is craft projects that actually make it to the machine. This week, I made my first quillow. When I started this, I had no clue as to what a quillow was or what one does with it. I went out and bought 3 yards of black fleece, packed my travel sewing machine & supplies and headed out to our meeting spot. Wouldn't you know it, I forgot black thread and had picked up navy blue by mistake. Duh!!!

Fortunately, one of my friends had a large spool of black quilting thread so I used that. Wound the bobbin, threaded the machine, and then read the directions over & over but they didn't compute. Must have had brain freeze or something like a senior moment or who knows what. Anyway, I just sat there trying to figure it out. Fortunately, one of my friends recognized my dilemma and offered to help me out. We folded the fleece, cut off the amount for the pillow, and started trying to even up the ends. Oh yeah, a quillow is a blanket with an attached pillow for those who do know this. We measured, lined up, and using a yard stick to guide me with a rotary cutter, I cut crooked. We tried again. Lined up, measured carefully, and then I cut crooked. For some reason, I've never mastered cutting straight lines even with yardsticks, lined mats, etc.

Grrr... Then my friend tried cutting the fleece and it was still crooked. We laughed and figured out that the fabric was off grain and would not cut straight. Oh well, since I see crooked, I cut crooked. This quillow will go to my DD and she won't really care if it is perfectly straight or not. Well, I went to the sewing machine to sew this quillow and the fleece would not feed straight which resulted in crooked seams. Took them out muttering under my breath. Tried this again and felt like it was done even if it was a little crooked. As we got ready to turn the quillow, found out that the fleece had slipped and one section of the pillow was not sewn to the blanket. I need a walking foot for my travel machine. Muttering again, I started to frogstitch the pillow. By then, the day was half over and all I wanted to do was go home. Trying a third time, I finally finished the quillow to the point that it was acceptable. Then I started stitching the edges in a red decorative stitch. Maybe I should have done that before attaching the pillow (ya think???). Got 2 edges done and called it a day.

When I got home and looked at it, I realized it looked like a first grader's project. It was not something I was proud of or would want others to know that I made. So, I put it away. Today, I'm frogstitching the decorative stitches as well as the pillow. I figure that if I sew it on my Pfaff with its IDF, maybe the fabric won't slip and my seams will be straighter. Also, I decided I want to add some embroidery to the pillow part and I'll need to frogstitch it to do that. Whether this quillow will be finished or not remains to be seen. For now, I'm going to go back and re-read some sewing books. Happy Sewing!

Farewell 2008 ... Welcome 2009

Happy New Year everyone. The first week of 2009 is almost over and I keep wondering where the time went. For Christmas, I did a flurry of sewing projects - pillowcases, ornaments, baby bibs, pillows, napkins, etc not to mention some embroidery projects. DH surprised me with the Embird Software w/Iconizer so I hope in 2009 to do more projects with embroidery. Since I seldom make resolutions (as I never keep them anyway) I won't bore you with my goals for this new year. I am thankful for my health, my family and my sewing ministry.

Over Christmas, my youngest sister came for a few days with her family. We enjoyed our time together which is always way too short. We got to meet our niece's fiance and hear all about her wedding plans. While I won't be able to attend her wedding for health reasons, I am happy to share in her joy and excitement. The wedding is over Memorial Day weekend. DH & DD will go to Orlando for the big event and I'll get a DVD of the ceremony. I love that she has created a website to keep family and friends updated on her plans as they are finalized. http://www.mywedding.com offers a lot of options for building a site.

To add to our joy, my younger brother, Steve, and his lovely wife, Theresa, had a healthy baby girl named Heidi Elizabeth on December 12th. Of course, I had to come up with special gifts for this precious little one. That's 2 boxes of gifts off in the mail for them. Big sis, Savannah, is so excited over her new little sister.

All in all, the future looks bright. Happy Sewing!