The One Where I Finished Early

For the Love of Solids swap big item [and little item]...Finished!

All I had left to finish on my pillow was the binding, but I had put it off for a few days because I'm just not one of those people who enjoys it. In my mind, there is nothing creative about that part, and that's what I really like about quilting. 

Anyways, I worked on my machine binding skills, or lack thereof. I like machine binding pillows because they get thrown around a lot and washed a lot, so I want to make sure the stitching is really secure. As you can see, I use binder clips when ironing to hold the binding down. 

I didn't do too bad! I had a couple spots that I had to go back, but this was a good stretch of binding.

 Also interesting is that I planned for this pillow to be 20" square. But it's not. I guess with all those finicky seams that I was having trouble with all those tiny measurements that were off all added up, so one side finished at 18.5". So the 20" pillow form for this picture looks a little funny, because there's space at the top and bottom.

So I turned it sideways! And while I think that the actual pillow shape looks better when laying this way, I had always planned for the design to be vertical, so I'm not sure how I feel about it. Obviously, it is up to my partner as to how the pillow will be displayed.

And here's the back. I didn't have it in me to fight with a zipper after fighting with piecing the top, so I just went for a simple envelope closure with the top piece quilted for durability and the bottom piece doubled up.

And while I'm still in the binding spirit I'll be binding my Tangerine Tango challenge piece later today too. So that way tomorrow I can do fun things ;)

Go check out all the other modern finishes linked up at Megan's today. I like grabbing a mug of tea/coffee and some Girl Scout cookies and browsing through other people's projects!

Organizational Saturday!

I grew up in a family of extreme organization. I am not that on top of things now that I have my own place. Mainly because we have more stuff than we have space. Also, I haven't been able to get too many nice organizational items to make sure that everything has a home.

Still, I do what I can.

Small shelves. Nice baskets. Glass hurricane jars. These are things that I can do.

My sewing space, despite being less than a month old, was in need of better organization before I could continue working. Especially since I've been cutting out patterns. I need a clean surface.

So I purged. Very traditional fabric that I inherited from my Oma [German for grandma, for those who don't know]. Spools of thread that were just about empty. Random junk. I threw away a whole plastic bin of junk! Yay! I also organized my grandma's sewing box and am airing out her sewing bench so I can store things in there.

 This is all the fabric I have that is a FQ or larger. Most of it is half yard cuts. My baby stash :)

 My corner is slowly growing! I put up a little corkboard [where my Tangerine Tango Challenge piece is pinned up for now]. I changed out the stuff on the corner shelf.

 Now its glass jars full of my thread [with most often used thread at the top, of course!] and my vintage button collection. Plus a little coaster set :)

 My scraps got a new home: on the left, a recycled Twizzler container holding pieces that are considered big scraps, like fat-eight size, but less than a FQ; warm scraps; cool scraps [the plastic bins are $1 at Home Depot]. I store these under my table where it overlaps with the back of my couch.

 This basket now holds leftover pieces of binding from various projects. The longer pieces are held together in a coil by a binder clip.

Have you been putting off cleaning up and clearing out your space? You should do it! I feel revitalized and ready to create! And I promise I'll be showing actual projects next time I post ;)

A day for binding

I just finished up 2 pillows [which will be for show and tell on another day!] and am taking a much-needed five minute break to eat a giant marshmallow. Which, by the way, you should definitely check them out next time at the store. It doesn't seem like they're too much bigger than the regular ones, and then you realize you're holding it and chomping it just like you would an apple.

Anyways.

Today I made binding en masse. This is for a quilt and some potholders and some wall hangings. And actually, I just cut up the entire yard for the striped fabric, because I know it will definitely get used on various things, despite the fact that I did not measure how much binding I needed for that quilt.

Ah, yes, this quilt. That's my favorite panel of them all. He's so cute. The Grinch.

Is it Christmas yet?