Here Comes November

 

I had to take the City Sampler down today because I am once again out of the sashing fabric that I'll be using for the final border of the top. It's on order and coming this week, but I wanted to work on something new. Well, not new, but really getting kinda old at this point--The Temperature Quilt. Specifically the month of November. Yes, the end of this endless piecing is finally maybe almost in sight.... 

At this point I'm going to say I'm looking forward to sewing these columns all together into a finished quilt top. It's funny to me to see how much of each temperature range I cut in excess of what I needed for some unknown reason. I probably got on a roll cutting and was listening to a book or podcast. Will all those extra half-hexies be pieced together for the back?

 For a pillow cover that I made during the Journey2Nebula, like perhaps anotherLucky Charm or 

maybe a Jawbreaker?

Back To It

After many days away from my studio due to all the Thanksgiving busy-ness, I'm finally back in front of my sewing machine. I got to work right away on the June column of the Temperature quilt. Mostly because I need to use my design wall.

It's going together pretty quickly.

For our visitor's sake, I took off all the covers of the couch pillows to wash them and hopefully help with limiting the amount of pet hair. I realized I had some repairs to do for the Jawbreaker and Lucky Charm pillows. These have been out on the couches since 2020, and they've beenwashed a couple times, but there were some big issues on the edges. The woven upholstery fabric I used for the back of the pillows had given way and raveled in several places. That took a while to re-stitch, but it will be worth it to have these last longer. 

**Reminder to self: Next time I make a pillow with this time of fabric remind me to use a French Seam.

I was never terribly happy with the lap over non-closure I'd done on the back so I added some rectangles of velcro.

And for a personal big win, I remembered to select the correct sew-in version, not the stick-on one.

Now they're going into the wash.

 

120° Degrees

 

This is mostly for me, but here's how I did the 120° corners on the mini quilt/tablerunner. Mark a diagonal line at the corner and stop stitching on or just shy of that point. Make sure and backstitch.

This step is where we see the biggest difference in applying binding to 90° corners, when you fold the binding back over itself- align the raw-edge bottom of the binding straight with the bottom edge of the next section around the corner you're working on of the item being bound.

The next step is to fold the binding down back over itself,  and then pinning down that fold. 

Start stitching (and backstitch) on that same point where you stopped before, at the center diagonal of the corner and 1/4" away from the raw edge.

Repeat those steps with all the corners, join your binding ends as per usual.

I sewed the binding down from the front by machine as this is going to be a frequently machine washed item. The trick to this is to go more slowly than usual, and take your time folding the binding on the corners.

Some closeups of how the binding looks.

I like how a new word is suggested because of the piecing, It looks like "dictrum" maybe?

More views of the words fabric and the quilting.

This turned out to be a fun project, and now I don't have these pieced triangles sitting around.

Here's how the corner binding looks, I did a needle-down pivot and stitched into the binding join at each corner a few stitches and then back stitched, pivoted in the next direction and .

It seems to make it a little flatter.

Pretty pleased with how this turned out.

Rock Candy Decided

 

Here's the answer to yesterday's question on whether to add more quilting. 

As you can see, the answer was yes.

I like how it looks quilted all over.

And even though the metallic threads were a pain (as usual) I like how they sparkle along with the flecks of gold in the background fabric. It's going to look pretty on the table.

Tah-dah! There it is, all done. Pointy points, and flatter than flat.

Done or Not

 

I'm at the point in quilting the Rock Candy table-topper that I could be calling this one done. There are a couple more projects in the Journey2Nebula event that I wanted to try and I could start working on them.

I've outlined all the star diamonds with metallic thread. The background triangles and borders are fairly closely free-motion quilted. I could just put the binding on and let it be done. I'm still so excited about the pointy points!

But I think I might want to add more quilting within the star diamonds. Not in metallic, because I was having a terrible time with those threads (like always). Maybe just some straight lines and not free-motion, but I'm not decided at this point.

Layered Rock Candy

 

Time to sew this Rock Candy table topper together the rest of the way, but one last change in the layout.

Here it is with the borders added on and layered for quilting. No exterior points were cut-off or un-pointy! Woohoo! This is a big deal for me, I think those rulers really helped in my improved accuracy. The rest of it went together pretty darn well too. I really like the background fabric that I chose. Now to do some quilting. Free motion or just lines...hmmmm.

Rock Candy Decisions

Decisions decisions.

When I last posted about the current Journey2Nebula project, Rock Candy, these first two were the arrangements I had started out with. I settled on the second one, having the darker grey make a prominent star in the center.

I decided to play around with it before just sewing it together and being unhappy with it, and I'm glad I did! Here I tried to put the lightest colors on the outside. But it doesn't quite work.

More fiddling around, looking much better, but my eye keeps getting stuck on that super dark grey with white plus signs.

Ahhh much better. Worth the time to cut a few extra pieces of fabric. Still pretty dark, but not as contrasty within the fabric shape itself.

I think this might be the final version that I've landed on. But I am still hesitating to start sewing it together. Maybe I'll just dive in. I like the dramatic look the dark grey background gives this piece in process.

Rock Candy Started

I've started another Journey2Nebula project, first the fabric pull, 18 prints.

Here's all the pieces cut out using the Sidekick ruler, and that's the pattern, Rock Candy. This time it's a "table topper" which I guess is not the same thing as a table runner because it's not a rectangle?

 I truly don't know these terms,  it might as well be an antimacassar over the davenport or something as far as I know. Bad housewife, yep, that's me.

Kind of weird colors, and this picture is truly off color-wise. I have to work on the way this is laid out before I sew it together. At this point I think the background will be a dark grey, but I haven't decided yet.

Jawbreaker Done

 

The Jawbreaker pillow for Journey2Nebula is complete and on my couch. Look how pointy the points turned out!

There are a lot of eyes in the Tula Pink prints that I used.

A lot of stitching, along all the edges of the pieces.

I'm really pleased with the border fabrics and how the quilting turned out.

Here's how it looks with my pillow insert made out of batting scraps. It's not quite the right size unfortunately, so I may replace it with an official sized pillow if it bugs me. I chose not to go with a binding around the edge like in the pattern because I used upholstery fabric on the back and I thought it would just be too bulky.

I like how it looks with the Lucky Charm pillow.