Wondering how long it would take me to get back to the blog, eh? Well, I have been working on two flannel quilts for two special little boys. I pieced all my remnants and left overs from several years of jammie-robe making, and came out with enough long strips calculated in 6" units to make two 72" long quilts about 45 or so inches wide. Looking at backing led me to 108" flannel backing at Joann's in which selection you don't have much color choice. I selected grayish marbled flannel which is on the warm side of gray, and Warm and Natural batting - one Queen Size batting will make two quilts this size, and everything is now ready for pinning and quilting. Another few weeks of nothing from me here while I get that work accomplished!
Notice the good help I always have when working in the sewing room or out on the dining table. Pearl is a great supervisor, and a tremendous help. She keeps the mood good no matter what sort of sewing or quilting complications may arise! Before I pinned these, I consulted the good quilters at PatternReview.com about the right-side-wrong-side thing with the batting. Seems the side you can see was pierced downward by needles is the right side, and where the needles came out of the batting and left little tufty things is the wrong side. So put the right side up toward the top and sewing it will be easier they say. I won't try to experiment, I will just do it that way. This will be the maiden voyage for the J6300 in the realm of FMQ. I used the walking foot to sew the strips together for the tops, and it was great - I set the machine on about the middle to a bit more speed, but never the top speed on the speed regulator and then used the pedal usually all the way. The machine sews so nicely and the tops went together speedily.
In case you thought I had forgotten my Pfaff, no. I made a few small double-sided quilted fabric remnant cases of various sorts again this past week. One is a Bible cover for a very small Bible and one is a cosmetic case now. It was previously a too large small Bible cover! The fabric was a nice remnant at Joann's, and how I love those double-sided remnants. Once my daughter showed me how to sew zippers in for these cases, I really found I like to make them. With the variable needle positions the Pfaff is best for this as it will sew on the zipper with out me changing to the zipper foot - it has a nice more narrow feed and with IDT it is a cinch it will hold the line well. The Pfaff just got home a few weeks ago from an infrequent visit to the sewing tech for a nice spa treatment and adjustment. There were no issues, but after quilting a largish quilt I wanted her to be in tip top shape. It was a lot of work, and very probably a drain on one of her mature years. I know it was for me being also one of mature years. Making these small cases is a nice change from working on the two larger quilting projects. But they are soon going to be in the quilting stage as well.
