{Post 1,055} Rachel's Money Bag

My Rachel goes to a flea market on Fridays and Saturdays.  She has "meals on wheels", a large wire mesh garden wagon.   She loads it with food and drinks then walks around to sell to the other vendors.  She sells various types of muffins, brownies, ham biscuits, sausage biscuits, soft drinks, bottled water, coffee, hot chocolate, etc.  She has quite a rapport with the vendors, and they appreciate her service.  One small problem has been finding a way to handle her money (lots of small bills).  She thought of using a money clip--a metal thing to slide across her wad of bills.  We were discussing it while we stood in front of the teller at our bank.  The teller said, "why don't you just make her one?"  This is the result of my effort:

I used this tutorial for a starter idea and made it much smaller.  

http://www.noodle-head.com/2012/06/open-wide-zippered-pouch-diy-tutorial.html

I did use the iron-on interfacing.  I let her pick the fabrics, so I knew she would like them!  I boxed the bottom corners by only sewing 3/4" in from the point.  Not much, but enough to make it better than my original flat one (this is the second one I made...first failed!).

~Joan

{Post 1,054} Veins and Tendrils

Last post on this for tonight.  I am tired.  Like dog tired.  So is my husband.  I slept 14 hours the other night.  Feel like I could do it again tonight!  Machine quilting wears me out, so I try to do it in small bites.  Since I did two continuous borders on this quilt and changed thread colors, I had a lot of unrolling and rerolling on this quilt.

I ended up using a polyester orange thread that matched my orange Thimbleberries pumpkins nearly perfectly.  One of those "did I already quilt there" matches.  Here is a picture, but the quilting is hard to see.

Now for the veins and tendrils.  I will start out far and let you move closer:

You can see the meandering some in the last two pictures.  I also quilted a star in the stem of the pumpkin.  I double sewed the tendrils, purposely stitching a little to the side.  I could only last for 6 pumpkins.  More tomorrow!

~Joan

{Post 1,053} Corner of Feels Like Fall

Here is a corner I just turned of my own version of a pattern in Angela Walters' book, Free-Motion Quilting.  I'm still learning the ins and outs of my HandiQuilter machine and frame.  Now I'm quilting a simple zigzag in the cream one-inch-wide border.  Just ran out of thread and time, so a good place to stop for now.

My pumpkin blocks are the same size as the flying geese blocks.  I'm not sure the veins will be enough quilting to make it as flat as I'd like.  I am going to get a thread that matches the pumpkins as closely as possible and do a simple meander or small loops in them, then quilt the veins and tendrils in a dark brown.  I think I'll like that better!

My motto for quilts:  better to rip it now than to regret it forever.

~Joan

{Post 1,052} Feels Like Fall Quilting

Here is the beginning of my Feels Like Fall quilt top being quilted.  I am going to unsew the pumpkin veins and tendrils.  One cannot see the tendrils because the thread matches the background too closely.  I am going to do the veins on my DSM in a brown thread because they show up too much.  Fortunately, I only have 2 pumpkins to unstitch.

Here is my flying geese block with my own made-up version of a continuous-line quilting design (no stencil used):

I am marking the pumpkin blocks for veins with a homemade stencil.  My mom got me a book of quilt patterns a while ago in a huge 3-ring binder.  They were all supposed to be hand cut from the stencils provided.  As it happens, I only liked one of the maybe 30 patterns in the book.  Nearly all the patterns could be rotary cut.  It was a very old book--as in, older than me.  

I saved the stencil sheets for my monogram signs and for quilt stencils.  I knew I would not be happy if the veins were not fairly consistent from pumpkin to pumpkin (yes--I'm OCD).  

Here's what I did:  I traced the outline of a block roughly with a Sharpie on one of the stencil sheets of plastic.  Then I Sharpied lines where I wanted the veins.  Then I cut out a wedge to trace as well as the vein closest to the edge.  I used a Mark-B-Gone to mark them.  Easy peasy.

Here is the outside edge (which I just flipped over for the other side) and the wedge cut out.

This shows the edge of the stencil pulled away from the left edge:

Maybe I can make a couple more passes on the machine today at some point.  Time will tell!

~Joan

{Post 1,051} Sewing Table Today

So happy that I did about 35 minutes of "walking at home" this AM.  It takes me a long time to cool down.  I walk in my sewing room to a DVD.  While I'm doing that, my eyes wander to all types of projects to do/start/complete/progress on/plan.  While I was cooling down, I sewed a few more strips sets for my Tree of Life blocks.

I squeezed in a few minutes later to complete the centers of two identical tops that I will be selling later.

Here is my sewing table a few minutes ago, with explanation to follow:

Clockwise, starting at the back left corner is my HQ bobbin winder, then my plastic spinach box lid with my Tree of Life block parts in it.  Then my two bobbin holders--machine quilting thread on the bottom, regular on the top tier.  My iPod speakers, my orange water spray bottle for the iron to the right (out of the picture), and two stray pieces of binding that need to be put in the leftover binding drawer.

On my mini ironing board (with the blue striped cover) are two quilt tops I will be selling after they are complete...hopefully before Thanksgiving!!

The spoon handle sticking out from under the ironing board?  No idea :)

~Joan