Finished fooling around

 Hello all, and a very damp happy weekend! It feels strange to say that with all that is going on in the world right now, but I'm still glad to have made it through the week. This was a much better week, except for the epic fail that appears later in this post, and I did get some stitching done. Which reminds me-- the first of the easy tutorials for a Hands2Help is coming up this Sunday. Be sure to tune in!

For this week, I finished up the top for the Stay at Home Round Robin. Yay me! I actually pretty much kept up this year. It was a fun project and I started with a fun panel. Here's how I ended up:

 

 

This has been one difficult top to photograph, but at least I got a couple shots! Yester day it rained, and this morning we had sleet and freezing rain:

 

I tried to get a few shots this morning, but the top got wet and soggy. Thankfully, when I got home it was quite sunny, but also quite windy:

 I love how this top turned out. It's cheerful and happy, and it's sure to be comforting for a child. And how do you not love those dinosaurs? I did all of the rounds this year except applique. Honestly, the fabrics were so busy that I couldn't find a place for applique, and I didn't want to add it just to add it. 

 

 

I did make the last round, though. Chris chose Shoo Fly blocks, and you can see that the tiny blocks in the corners of the last border are mini Shoo Fly blocks. These are 3 inch finished blocks, and I think they're adorable. I also love the different colors of the final border. You know I did that because of the fabric that I had (which is used up!), but I still love how it looks.

So that was my happy finish for this week. Here is the epic fail:

 

At least this is not my fail, but a machine fail! I had an appointment to longarm, and as you can see, I got partway through the quilt and then the tension failed. No, I didn't notice until I rolled the quilt! 

 

Friends, I cried. 

 

 

I wasted three hours, and now I have to pick out all that quilting and go back and do it again. And I couldn't do my second quilt, either, because someone else was using the other machine. It was not a good drive home.

I couldn't look at the quilt for a couple of days, but I started on the ripping last night. There's nothing else to be done, unless I wanted to throw out the quilt. And who wants that? I know it will be lovely once I'm finished, right? Good thing fabric is so fun to play with, or I'd give up!

 

Ah, well. Hope you all are staying safe, warm, and dry, and are not in any kind of a war zone. It's a crazy world we live in right now, isn't it? Enjoy the weekend any way you can, and be sure to come back on Sunday for a much more successful project!

Sharing at Finished or not Friday, Brag About Your Beauties, the Patchwork and Quilts linkup at Quilting Patchwork Applique, and the SAHRR linkup, too.

From fail to finish

Hi everyone!  Are you ready for the new and improved polar vortex?  I hear that it's coming and there is no escape.  The temps were dropping Thursday afternoon, and several people I saw were already shivery.  It would probably help if they wore coats, but hey, that's not my business.  I finally did pull out my winter coat, too.  I didn't think it had been cold enough for a "real" coat, but that wind will just go right through you.

This week I have an actual finish, one that I've salvaged from a failed attempt a few weeks ago:

This is the little quilt that I had almost given up on because of a wrinkle on the backing.  When I posted about it earlier, the general consensus in the comments was along the lines of "suck it up."  So I did, and you all were right.  I was upset over nothing, really.

One commenter, who is no-reply so I couldn't thank her personally, suggested that I make the circles gradually larger in order to finish it up and avoid more wrinkles on the back.  Genius!  That's exactly what I did.  I free-motioned the remaining circles instead of using the walking foot, and they came out a little wobbly but good enough. 

The border is quilted with a big meander that simply circles around some of the flowers in the print.  It adds just enough texture to finish it off nicely.  I also had just enough (literally one inch left over) of the blue binding in the pre-made scrap binding basket.  Sometimes those come in handy!  The binding was done on the machine in no time at all.

I was worried about this being too stiff, but after I took the photos, I tossed this in the wash and it softened up really well.  And the wrinkle that I was so worried about can barely be seen on the back!

Another little quilt in the archives!  Perhaps "suck it up" will be my motto for next year.

Hope everyone has a great weekend as we race towards Christmas.  We are going shopping for a new dining room table.  Somehow ours isn't big enough for the whole family any more.  Odd how that happens, isn't it?

Finally, an update on the Gratitude Sale--donations have raised nearly $400 for the three charities I listed!  Thanks to everyone!  There are still many nice things left, and Priority Mail means you could still have something for yourself before Christmas, so check out the tabs at the top of the page.

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finished or Not Friday, and crazymom quilts.

Failed finish

Hi everyone!  Is it getting colder where you are?  It certainly was chilly here this week.  I shouldn't be surprised, though, because it's November, right?  Winter is coming, whether we want it to or not.  I'm actually looking forward to some cold and some other things about winter, but I know there will be white stuff falling from the sky soon, and I'm not looking forward to that.  I have seen how badly they clear the roads here, and it's just not pretty.

Also not pretty?  The little quilt that I wanted to be my finish for this week:

This little quilt is cute, but it counts as a fail for me, at least for now. I finished this a long time ago and chose the backing and everything. It's time for it to be completely finished! I tried two new things on this quilt and messed up both of them.  I should stick to just one new thing at a time.

It all started with this:

Yikes!  What can that possibly be?  That, my friends, is all the quilting work I've been putting off for at least the last year.  Okay, maybe a little longer.  Some of these were tops from before we moved that I never got around to, so I just folded them up and packed them away, but most are from the last year at the condo, when I had no space to actually quilt them up.  Now that there's room, I have both of my machines set up *plus* a table just to quilt on, so I thought I would spend much of the next few weeks quilting these up.  I thought I would start with the smallest ones and work my way up from there.  Great plan, right?

Here's where I went wrong--I almost always thread baste the old fashioned way.  I only use pins on tiny things where it doesn't matter that much, like mug rugs or very small wall hangings. Thread basting goes so much faster for me and works really, really well. It holds everything together nice and secure and I haven't had wrinkles in the back. But I thought I'd use pins here and just try it.  Yeah, here's what happened:

A big wrinkle!  Stitched in! There are a couple of smaller ones too. Before you ask, yes, I used a walking foot,  I smoothed everything, I checked the back all the time, and I used lots of pins.  I should not have wrinkles! What to do now?  Ripping it out seems to be the only solution, but the very thought makes me tired.

Here's my other mistake-- the spiral quilting.  It turn out looking pretty nice here, but I think I made it too close together.  It took forever and the top is very stiff. How far apart would you make your spirals?  These are about a half-inch apart, which seemed to be right for a small quilt. I was wrong about that. Again, ripping seems to be the only solution.

So, I was going to admit defeat and start on another one, doing something completely different (and more fun), but then this happened:

Siiiggghhh.  How does this even happen?  It's just completely unspooling. Time to pack it in for now.

So, that was my big fail for the week!  I did mean what I said earlier, though--I have to work my way through those tops.  Seems like a good project for the holiday period, doesn't it? We'll see how it goes!  I'm going to spend the weekend piecing together some batting and cutting some backings.  Hope you have something fun lined up!  If you have any good suggestions for my failed little quilt, let me know!

Sharing at Finished or Not Friday.

Power outage

Ever have the power go out at your place at a really inconvenient time?  That just happened to me!  It has been hot and stormy, on and off, for a few weeks now.  Not that big a deal really, but this week the power went out during a strong storm.  Not usually a tragedy, but this time it stayed out for about 8 hours.  Just when I had a bunch of sewing to do!  And laundry, and the dishwasher! And the air conditioning was out too, of course!  So, instead of finishing what I had planned, here is my big finish for this week:

These are potholders for my daughter.  Why buy them when mom can make you exactly what you want?  She chose some really cute fabric, I think.  It has all these "cooking words" on it:

These were fairly easy to make.  I just cut circles out of the fabric and some Insulbrite, (I traced around a salad plate) then layered them, lightly quilted, and then bound them with bias binding.  In retrospect, it was silly to cut the circles first.  I should have quilted it first and then cut the circles, but I wasn't thinking.  For the smaller ones, I just trimmed the sides of the circles to make an oval.  It worked for me. 

I'm also supposed to make some kitchen curtains for her, but the power was out so I didn't get to those either!  Oh, well!

Sad unmade curtains!

The other thing I was going to do was staple some ironing board fabric on my small ironing board (which I use all the time!), but I couldn't because I really need to use the electric stapler for that. I had a decorator fabric on it as a cover, but it's gotten really scorched and I'm hoping the silver fabric works better. Oh, well again! Use your imagination!

Hope all your projects worked out this week!  The hubs and I are at an academic conference, which is why it was so critical to do all those things the day the power went out.  Good thing my real-people clothes were all ready to go, or I might have to try to look professional in t-shirts and capris!

Have a wonderful weekend!  Here's hoping you don't have power troubles!  Or weather ones, either!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and crazymomquilts.

Life happens

Hi everyone!  Had enough of the turkey leftovers yet? We have none this year, as we left them all at my daughter's house!  She did a great job with the food and we had a lot of fun.  Except, for some reason we thought that it would be good to drive from Philadelphia to Maine.  It was a good idea on paper.  For those of you in the other parts of the country, did you know that the entire East Coast is essentially one gigantic city?  Zero fun to drive through!

So, today I was planning to post my finished Classic Stitches row quilt, but that has to be delayed until Friday.  Sadness!  What happened?  Well, life happened and I just didn't finish it in time to take pictures and get everything written.  I could have done it, but I chose to spend the time with my family instead.  I think I made the right choice.

I do have some sneak peeks of my quilt, though!

This was me trying to arrange my rows.  Maddening!  So many different ways to arrange things!

I also had to fix a couple of errors.  Even working on it for a year, I made mistakes, mostly in measuring the sashing because I apparently can't divide by 2:

Yep, that's going to be a problem.

But I got those fixed and got *almost* finished, so I'll definitely show it on Friday.  Watch this space!

Now that that's mostly out of my way, I also pulled out this set of fabric and blocks:

Wonder what I'll do with those?

Finally, here is a bonus picture of the hubs with our daughter's cats that our whole family found amusing:

Not only best husband ever, but also best cat perch ever!

Everyone have a great week, and I'll see you all back here on Friday!

Sharing at Linky Tuesday,  Let's Bee Social, and  WIP Wednesday.