WIP Wednesday with guest blogger Liz from Shush - I'm Quilting
I'm coolly okay about hanging out here at Freshly Pieced today for WIP Wednesday—I didn't get all skittish or anything when Lee emailed to let me know the exciting news. Nope, I did not run into lounge room squealing at hubby that - yay - I'm guest blogging at Freshly Pieced (response: *blank stare* "what's guest blogging?" Me: humph off to email my best quilty friends, who were much more excited for me). Anyway, it's very nice to meet all of you who haven't popped down to Shush before.
What have you been up to this week? I have just finished my straight line quilting on my lattice quilt. The patchwork portions have been stippled. This quilt has been such a roller coaster ride, but I love it now—I just want it finished. I'm soooo close though and I have a chocolate and white striped fabric just waiting to be the binding. See, it's all ready to go.
 |
| Yippee. Quilting: tick. |
 |
| Binding: all ready to go. Do you do this? Pop it on your machine's spare spool. It stops binding tangle, I tell you! |
While doing this quilt, I discovered a cool, new-to-me way to do straight line quilting around blocks. Instead of having to manhandle my quilt through the sewing machine to sew around the squares, I hit on the genius idea of quilting backwards once I hit the bit where you have to turn the wide part of the quilt through the machine. See:
 |
| Yep - I quilted backwards to get there. Yes I did. And it worked just fine. |
I discovered that going backwards I have to lengthen my stitch length from 3 to 3.3 because my machine stitches a bit shorter in reverse (I quilt on a Bernina 550 QE)—but other than that, it saved me heaps of turning agony. You just need to remember to put it back into forward stitching once you turn the corner again. Or you might have a whoopsie and go back in the wrong place. I totally didn't do that. Not at all.
Tell me I'm not the only person who does this. I'm not totally alone in my craziness, right? Right?Are you still there?
Anyway, fingers crossed it should be bound by Friday and then I'll have a real, grown-up finish. We'll see ...
Other than that, I have done a little more on my EPP diamond blocks. I love these, which is pretty surprising given how much I hate hand piecing.
 |
| Little birds trapped in cages for my fabricky pleasure. |
 |
| No I'm not unpicking the one I sewed in upside-down! |
Here is Princess** photo-bombing my blocks to show me her favourite one. No surprise there—it's the vintage dolls. I think it's my favourite too!
 |
| Is this my quilt Mummy? It needs to be bigger. Me: No kidding honey. |
Anyway, that's enough gabbling from me. I'm sure you've got something fabulous to show us. Pop on over to Shush if you want to have a look in at my gorgeous little fabricky and chocolatey giveaway. I'd love to see you.
* Why Shush, you ask? Well, because my day job is being a meany-pants banking lawyer and so we keep shush on my lovely nighttime quilty alter ego. My work mates just don't get it, anyway!
** My fashion conscious and stroppy three year old. She thinks I quilt solely for her pleasure. She's not far wrong!
What are you working on this week? Here are the linky rules:
1. Link up any post from the past week that features at least one unfinished work-in-progress (WIP).
2. Somewhere in your post, you must link back here to my blog. (Or grab the WIP Wednesday button for your sidebar.)
3. Comment on at least a few of the other WIP Wednesday links—commenting on the two or three links directly before yours works well to make sure everyone gets comments!