Monday, January 2, 2012

PDFS, Snow, Quilts, and Puppies.

I just need a moment to rant about how much I really hate PDFs. Really, why would you ever create a form in a PDF? No one is going to hand write the form, scan it, and email it back in. No! I want to type my answers all pretty on the line and send it back in but instead I am stuck trying to make the font go where I want it to go and then I accidentally hit delete because thats what you do when you want to backspace and instead it deletes the whole thing and you are left starting over. Four times! I hate it. I hate it. I hate it! STUPID PDFS!

I do, however, like snow, quilts and puppy dogs. :)

SNOW!

Okay so you're going to have to take my word that it was in fact snowing in this picture... 

QUILTS!

Today I started backing my baby quilt. I have to say, I really like working on this small of quilts. It makes handling them really easy. I was even able to tape the backing to the table which saved my knees the trouble of crawling around on the floor. Backing is my least favorite part of quilting. Actually binding definitely beats backing but I don't really like either.


I also haven't shared what my quilt looks like! Its a really simple 9 patch quilt that I made out of scraps of fabric I had laying around. It's for a baby boy so hopefully it has enough blue in it. I couldn't stay away from pinks altogether but I did my best. So, backing (upside down), batting, and finally quilt right side up. Then lots and lots of safety pins to keep everything sandwiched together.



Getting your finger under the safety pin to buckle it without A) poking yourself or B) completely shifting the layers of the quilt can be really hard. You can pay for a tool that helps close safety pins but I'm not willing to shell out money for a tool that dumb. So instead I grabbed a crochet hook out of my sewing box and it worked quite splendidly.


Many, many, many safety pins later and its all pinned together and ready for sewing!


 BUT... before I start free motion quilting, I have to learn how. In case you're wondering, free motion quilting is where you make pretty designs with your stitches to hold the three layers together. If you look at almost any old quilt they have elaborate and beautiful free motion designs all over them. In essence you move your quilt under the machine needle in the pattern you want your stitches to be. This method is different than "stitch the ditch," where you sew straight lines along all or some of your seams so that the layers are held together but the thread is less visible. You can also just knot the quilt, which is where you pull a longer piece of string through all of the layers in a few different places and tie them into knots.

The pattern I am planning to free motion quilt is called stippling and is supposedly a good place to start. It kind of meanders around the quilt. Because I wasn't about to start stippling on my actual quilt, I threw together a mini quilt (aka two pieces of fabric sandwiching a piece of batting) to practice on. Good thing too because I realized I have the wrong presser foot for my sewing machine and need to make a stop to the sewing store tomorrow.

So I started practicing and the front was looking great!



And then I turned it over...


Ya... its not supposed to look like that. I played with the tension settings on my sewing machine for about an hour and did some google searching to determine the problem. In the end I decided I need a different foot that has a spring to keep your fabric from bouncing around between each stitch. And that is why I didn't start out free motion quilting on my actual quilt. I would have cried if I turned my quilt over and this is what I saw.

Last but not least...

Puppies!!!

I have such patient dogs. They even put up with hats. :)





No comments:

Post a Comment