Jo-Ann's Sale

I went to Jo-Ann's for their Daffodil Dash sale, and stocked up on fabric. I really love that they put the clearance fabric on sale. They had some fabrics that made me think of vintage sheets so I was excited to get them. Plus, I was able to pick up what was left of a green 30's style daisy vine that I really like. It was a great find, because I originally picked up the fabric for my Grandma's Flower Garden Quilt, but my mom found she really likes it for her vintage 30's triangle quilt. I'm making it for her birthday/mother's day. I can't wait to get moving on the quilt, but she is driving me nuts by not making up her mind on the solid for the patterned fabric to be against. She can't decide between bleached or natural muslin. So now I have a ton of fabric for me to assign to projects, though I really need to finish up some of UFOs. I have reached the double digits, at least for most of them the top is finished, its simply a matter of quilting or finding a backing for them.

Seam Allowance

I finally figured out why I have been having such a hard time getting my seams to align. I thought my presser foot was a 1/4" from the needle and apparently it is closer to 3/8" just enough to royally mess up something with a lot of seams. Now that I know, I can either start sewing the 1/4" seam or adjust my cut pieces to allow the 3/8" seam. Currently, I am leaning more towards just adjusting the cuts, as I have a hard time sewing a consistent seam without something to align the edge of my fabric.

Free motion quilting

I finished the quilting on my first free motion quilt. I continue to see all my mistakes, though I will admit that it looks awfully good when viewed with some distance. I enjoyed the meandering stipple, even if overall quite a few of my curves wound up with points and angles. Overall, it really turned out well. Yay! So all it needs is a border and I will have finished my first quilt for myself.

Unfortunately, I have made a habit of only finishing the quilts that I give away as gifts. I am working on this by starting to build up my trousseau. I can only hope that my relationship with my boyfriend leads to its need. Anyway, I really enjoyed the freedom of free motion quilting though I think I would like a little guidance since I am just starting out. So next time I may choose to draw some basic quilting lines/motifs before I start.

I even did a pieced back. I am so excited. Its a perfect little lap quilt. All it needs is the border now for me to finish it. Though again my apparently bad sense of taste/style has reared its ugly head again so I need to pick up some white to finish the binding. Well, the white didn't work with the quilt, so I wound up finding a kona cotton red in a darker shade than the predominant red for the quilt. I can't wait until it is done. It's sitting in my room with the binding pinned on, ready to go as soon as my machine stops acting up. What a pain.

Back up

Man, all I can say is back up your work. My computer hard crashed with my travel drive in it, now my travel drive isn't being read when plugged in. I had all my quilts on here. If I can't recover the data, I will have lost something like 180 different designs. I am so furious at myself. I was clearing off the extra stuff off my comp and had already deleted them off my comp. I even took tiffs of all my designs so that I could remake the designs if I lost the actually files. The worst part is this is not the first time I have lost designs due to my bad back up habits. I seriously am so sick of my computer eating my work that it is not funny.