A Finish

I have finished my Triple 4 Patch, binding and all.  I had long strips of the floral striped fabric from cutting the borders from the length of the fabric. I decided to use the lighter blue stripes for the binding.

 It looks darker here but I think you can get the idea. The lighter stripes were about 2 inches wide so I laid the edge of my ruler at the
edge of the lighter strip and cut 1/2 inch into the darker stripe for 2 1/2 inch strips. So my strips were like this on the left.

I folded it in half and pressed it and laid the strip on the edge on the quilt front with the raw edge of the darker fabric face up on the raw edge of the quilt.


After I stitched the binding all around I pressed it away from the quilt. You can see it in this photo
before I pressed it around to the back with only the lighter fabric showing.  I wrapped the binding to the back and pressed it down and secured it with thin strips of fusible web (for me this works so much better than pins); I stitched with the #4 Bernina stitch from the front.






 This is how it looks on the front. I didn't care to have the entire width of the stitches on the binding because it is already stitched on.





I wanted to have the entire width of the stitching on the binding on the back of the quilt, both for appearance and so the edge would be flat and secure. I used variegated thread  so it may be hard to see unless you enlarge the photo.


I couldn't get a shot of the full quilt today because there is no space to spread it out. I got all the the Christmas  quilts and wall hangings and linens out the they were are still all over my bed.

Almost a Finish

I finally had a day to sew all day; they are rare anymore for some reason. I machine quilted the Triple Four Patch quilt and all I have left to do is trim away the excess and sew on the binding. I am contemplating what to do about the binding. I have a lot of leftover binding pieces from years of quilting and I could add some more strips and make a scrappy binding. Another option would be to cut strips of something and make a one fabric binding.

I laid the quilt out on my bed for the photos because it is the best place for lighting and the best for this size quilt.

I also get photos that are pretty much true color.

I used off white/cream thread to quilt through the light colored squares and a multicolor  thread to quilt through the 4 inch squares. I echoed the lines of the light chains.










I used the same multicolor thread with the number 4 Bernina stitch and followed the edges of the floral stripes in the border.

I never noticed this one small 4 patch that is turned sideways until I was quilting through it. At first I thought I was stitching in the wrong direction and when I stopped to look at it I managed to get a bobble in my stitching line.
I thought at first I should fix the stitching because it shows up really well in the dark purple patch. It will be my "humility patch". Keeping it real, I never need to deliberately add a humility patch; there are always plenty of them to be found.

This is the back; I included my hand to show the scale of the print. The colors are brighter in the photo than they really are. I'm not sure why they show up brighter when the other fabric were pretty much true in the photos.

I will probably finish the binding tomorrow and then do some Christmas sewing. I need a few more small pieces for the end tables etc.

Triple Four Patch

I just finished layering and pin basting this triple 4 patch quilt. I must admit IT IS ABOUT TIME!  This has been hanging around for a while in various states of completion. The blocks were made by members of the Friendship  block swap group. I think I requested the blocks 2 different years, maybe 3. I had them in a box and every so often I would make one or two more. I finally put them together  2 or 3 years ago and in January 2014  I added the borders. You can see a shot of the whole flimsy here.

This is the third time I have made a quilt with 8 inch triple 4 patch blocks and each quilt has been a different layout. It is one of my favorite scrap patterns because it is easy to cut all the main fabric patches from leftovers. I can cut them and save them and make a bunch of little dark and light 4 patches and save them and when I feel like putting them together it all goes together fast.

I won't get to the quilting before Thanksgiving but maybe soon after.

A flimsy and a scarf

I finally finished adding the borders to my Triple Four Patch quilt.  I would have finished sooner but I had several busy days with non quilting things. Monday the weather was good to drive so we dropped off my Bernina to be fixed and it turned out to be a long day of driving due to taking the long way home. I didn't feel like doing any sewing after dinner.

You can see my Janome Gem lightweight traveling machine in the lower corner of the photo. It is a nice little machine for piecing and has a much nicer straight stitch  than my Bernina but I am eager to ransom get my Bernina back with all the features I bought it for. Maybe MY straight stitch will be better too.

I can't get back any farther in my room and right now I can't move the machine any farther away from the design wall due things that don't belong in my room taking up space.












I added 2 sides and mitered the corner and the miter looked good but the corner wasn't square. I went on to other 2 side borders and did the miters differently and they came out perfect. I went back and redid the first corner and now they are all square.






I finished my scarf and I like it but there are some things that could be better. It is much shorter in length and makes it awkward  to wrap and requires some fussing to get it looking right. I am not an experienced knitter and know almost nothing about yarn and how to read the labels so when I was shopping for needles and yarn I finally just went with the color I liked and hoped for the best in the weight. All in all  I think I came pretty close but I forgot that I had a second skein of the same yarn just in case I needed it (actually I couldn't find it so I thought I didn't buy it after all) and when I came to the end of the yarn I was 10 notches short of what  the pattern called for. The pattern said to knit to 42 notches or the end of the skein it, it called for a larger skein but I didn't think about whether or not all skeins were the same size. I learned a lot from this scarf. Making all the dish cloths helped me become better at the actual  knitting but this taught me about choosing and buying yarn.

I also learned that I have a lot more to learn.

A Flimsy ......almost

I finally sewed all the blocks together for the Triple Four Patch and I thought I was finished and ready to layer it up and add Prairie points after it was quilted but I decided to add a border instead, so it isn't a flimsy yet.
There is a mistake in the fifth row down on the right where the far right block is sewed to the block on the left. I have  one of  the little black and white 4 patches turned the wrong way. I saw it when I had 4 blocks together and I decided to leave it. It is one of two little surprises to find  in the quilt.

This is the other surprise. When I was snipping threads I snipped a little gouge near the upper left corner. In all of my squares of different sizes (and there are many, many... really many) there was not one single square or even a scrap of this fabric. This quilt really needed this fabric block so I fixed it with a little triangle of a similar colored fabric. In the overall picture I do not think it will detract.




The top measures 56 x 64 as it is now. and I think I will cut my borders 6 inches. That is the measurement of 3 stripes. I bought this striped fabric for something a long time ago and the colors were too deep in value for the quilt and I have tried to use it several times but it never worked;  this time I think I found it's place. I will  probably miter the corners. I still have a dread of mitered corners but they always turn out fine with out any problems. I think it is probably time to get over my aversion to miters.
My sewing room is still a mess with almost no room to work but I put this top together anyway and just walked carefully from my machine to the ironing board.
I did get my stack of Christmas quilts put away today but I think I am going to have to clean up a little more to have room to cut my borders. Now that I can envision a finished quilt I have my batteries charged up for a finish.

I hope my enthusiasm lasts.





Triple 4 patches etc.

I thought I would have a Triple Four Patch flimsy by now but I've had some interruptions. We had family over for dinner Sunday and yesterday Mrs. Scrooge (me)  got up and started taking the ornaments off of Christmas tree; that took ALL day. I bought some plastic ornament boxes to replace the old cardboard boxes that were getting dried out and  brittle. It took some thinking rearranging and  reworking to get everything packed away. I was determined to have it all together and not here and there and some things forgotten only to be put somewhere else where they would not be remembered until after Christmas. Jack would have been happy to have it up a few  more days but I think all in all he is happy to have his chair back where it belongs, closer to the TV. It is good to have the light coming in the room again now that the tree is not blocking the window.

I still have to put the Christmas quilts away. I folded them on the bias as suggested by Ann Fahl in a post some months ago. I washed up all the Christmas tablecloths, place mats, towels and other cloth stuff and will put them with this stack and wrap them with a sheet and put them on the top shelf in the linen closet. It is  a good place for anything that won't be taken down for another year as it  too high for me to reach with out a ladder and I have been discouraged from using a ladder.

 I  did get his far with the T4P blocks. they are sewed into foursies and sixies (the bottom 3 rows are sixes). this is the third T4P quilt I have done and each one was a different setting. I  made some of the blocks for this and I  thought the rest were from the friendship group  but some of them had labels on them from an Internet block swap from almost 15 years ago. I think they were leftovers that didn't appeal  color wise with the other blocks. This time I just put them up on the wall with Random Abandon and made only a few switches.

I should get this much sewed together today as I am staying in again today. The sun is out and it looks pretty good but the forecast for today is single digits and I see no reason to venture out.