Learning

I have an industrial Janome sewing machine that I have named Jay. I usually do most of my piecing on him since he has this great scant 1/4" foot. But, with the Vintage Christmas sew-along I'm doing with my friend Katie, I wasn't getting the correct 1/4" seams.

I don't generally have to do much accurate piecing anymore. I have shifted to more of an art/free style quilter, or using patterns that don't require such accuracy since I'm happier doing them. But these little 6 1/2" blocks have a lot of pieces and very little ones at that. Accurate piecing is a must.

The thread I had in Jay was from Connecting Threads. He likes the thread, and it's pretty inexpensive to purchase. But it's thicker thread and just that difference in thickness was causing my blocks, especially those that had more pieces, to become increasingly off as I was building them. Now I'm piecing with Aurifil and the results are vastly improved. Lesson learned.

Hazel is learning too. This morning she mastered going down the stairs from our loft area. She wasn't all about being in the bathroom while I wanted to shower, so we had a stair master lesson instead.

I was able to get the quilt on the long arm completed last night. Jim graciously watched puppy while I was finishing up. I have four charity quilts coming either today or tomorrow to do for the guild downstate, and I needed to get this one done so receiving those wouldn't feel so stressing.

Dale's BOM from a few years ago

This quilt wasn't anything spectacular when I loaded it last week, but after getting some feathers in the negative space, and doing some dot-to-dot quilting in the stars, it turned out pretty nice in the end.