11 years ago
Today is the day I pull it all together.
Everything needs to be ready before I leave for Arizona tomorrow morning ---two weeks worth of travel and teaching winding up with the taping of my episode on The Quilt Show!
I am nervous – oh so nervous!
Here I am digging in really humble scraps, making my “step out” sections for demonstrating how my quilt Jamestown Landing from my book String Fling came to be and how it comes together, and feeling a bit unsure of my fabric choices.
Do I be safe and choose more “current” fabrics?
Do I be myself and throw everything in there?
What would YOU do? And would you do it with trepidation or apologies?
Nope! I’m going to be ME – and I just sewed as I always do ----rarely looking at the print, mostly dealing with color and value placement, and most of all VARIETY!
The star blocks are made with four rotated “Broken Dishes” units.
Chain Pressing!
Do you chain press? I do!
I know a lot of quilters who will use their little razor-blade-on-a-stand tool to cut apart their units before pressing. Do you know that means more handling, one at a time, and it actually takes you longer?
Try this first…..Press the chain! You can move from one unit to another rather quickly – opening one unit after another as you press because they are all easily aligned. THEN you can go back and cut with your razor thing if you want, but I just tend to use scissors, sliding the blade quickly between the chaining threads and separating the units. Try it! This way it is also very easy for me to pick these up and stack them all the same direction.
Chain pressing the broken dishes units:
I pressed these all to one side, then clipped the chaining threads and spun the seams so that the units would nest with each other no matter which way I decided to turn them:
One unit spun!
They all need to spin the SAME DIRECTION, so when sewing the halves together, make sure they all go through the machine in identical placement. If they do..you will get this:
Nested, Baby!
Even if I rotate these block quarters in opposite directions, the seams will automatically nest no matter what! This makes me a happy quilter.
Last night during our crazy 2-episode session of Quilt-Cam I made THESE!
What a circus….we were about 45 minutes in to Quilt-Cam when something happened and I lost power to the entire house, so we were Quilt-Camming in the dark! You just gotta laugh at stuff like this ---it just happens to me all the time, and you know what? Laughter and improvisation is good! We waited til the power came back on and I started a second session. You can catch both sessions in last night’s post HERE.
This morning I have this little Step-Out kit ready to pack into my luggage!
And Yes – there is EVERYTHING in here..even Millennium Y2K fabric!
The rest of today will be spent with packing the right quilts that I need to go with me for the 5 workshops I’ll be teaching on this trip, as well as quilts for The Quilt Show. A bit of deskwork needs to be handled ((There is always more computer work than sewing going on around here it seems!)) and I’ll be ready to go in the morning!
Tonight I’ll be drawing our winner of the Give-Away March/April Issue of Quiltmaker Magazine via random number generator!
Have you entered? There is still time! Click HERE to leave a comment on THAT post ((not this one!)) to be entered. Good Luck Everyone!
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