Leftovers, Day One

Did you have a great Thanksgiving?  We did.  I'm glad to be moving on, though, bring out the tree!

I have a couple of days of leftovers for you, even if the weather here stinks and the photos are crummy.  So today you get a little wrap up of the Fall Table Topper. 

Being so used to sharing my knitting projects I am unsure exactly what details to include in the finished quilt posts.  You've been reading about my border decisions, and helping me out with them.  Usually I will tell what yarn I've used, needle size, pattern, but I didn't use the fabrics from one collection, I sort of grabbed a bunch of fabrics, some I loved and others I just thought the quilt needed.  I love the outer border fabric and after I got the quilt top together I worried that it was too novelty and would take away from the sophistication of the squares, but in the end I don't think it did at all.

The inspiration for this quilt is a pattern in Showstopping Quilts to Foundation Piece.  It is the Stars Baby Quilt (scroll down on the link for the photo).  I took a class to learn to paper-piece and I love the technique, mostly.  I am still pretty inexperienced and would love to repeat the class now that I have tried it in a couple of quilts.  There are a lot of little things, like when I went to sew my blocks together some of the seam allowances were going in the same direction and you can't really switch that, thanks to the piecing method.  Makes for really bulky seams in some spots.  I also wonder why my blocks came out small, I mean!  It is sewing on the line!  I measured the foundation pieces and the only thing I can think is that the little bit of fabric taken up in the seams was not accounted for.  So, as it turns out, I would have had to do all that measuring and math that I did to accomodate the addition of the small inner border anyway, as the border cuts as written wouldn't have been right.

 

Speaking of border math, I kept measuring my quilt top and then cutting my borders to fit, only they never fit and I just couldn't figure out what was wrong.  I was measuring the top with a tape measure and then cutting the borders using a ruler with my rotary cutter.  After several being way off I checked to see.....  The inch markings on my tape measure were not the same as my ruler!  How annoying is that?  Makes me wonder about all of the knitted things I measure with different tape measures and then have things turn out slightly off.  And which is right?  What is a true inch?  The inch on my rulers or the inch on my tape measures?  Really irritating.

I think that is my favorite square.  I really love to have a special backing on quilts, but I decided on unbleached muslin that I already had for a couple of very important reasons.  First, I had it in the house and second, it was already washed.  That was all it took.  And after much deliberation I ended up binding it in the same fabric as the outside border.  For the same reasons, really.

I also learned more about stitching in the ditch.  As a seamstress I have stitched in many ditches and wondered why it seemed a big deal that people were, as Alex Anderson puts it in her book, poorly executing it.  The thing is, in dressmaking the ditch is usually stitched in a seam allowance that has been pressed open.  When the ditch is in a seam allowance that is pressed to one side it is a heck of a lot harder to successfully execute, that is for sure.  One thing I figured out pretty far into the process is that when I lift my hands to move them along the quilt I go right off the ditch.  I really need to stop the machine, move my hands and then continue sewing.  I went off the ditch a lot of times wondering what the heck the problem was.  The borders would benefit from some nice quilting, but because I cannot machine quilt well enough yet and I was down to the last second (this quilt went from the sewing machine to the table mere minutes before we actually set it and ate!), I settled for the ditch.  I might quilt the borders in the future, you never know.

As we sat at dinner, Gillian and I were admiring it sitting on the table and she asked, "Aren't you worried that food will be spilled on it?" which I was.  I replied that I was most worried about the cranberry sauce and wine, which was right when we saw that the wine bottle that had been passed around, had left a little dribble on the quilt.  Oh well.  I'll get it out somehow, right?

One hundred twenty-nine.  Or day TWENTY-SEVEN!  Two more days of leftovers will include the Gobble, Gobble Turkey wall hanging and Crazy for Felted Pumpkins!  Save your appetite!

Comments

[Laurie]

That is the BEST table topper setup I've seen yet! There is a commercial product that gets out wine stains. I last saw it sold at Rabbit Hill Inn in VT. If they don't sell it from their website, email them. They are friendly people.

[Marcia]

I love the topper and need to do a holiday runner or topper for my table one of these days. If you go to a wine shop, they have stuff that will take out wine stains...it's called Wine Away. Hubby drinks...and spills...red wine a lot, so I always have a bottle! (Good for other food stains and "pet accidents".)

[LoriG]

The problem with tape measures is that non-metal ones stretch over time. This is why precision quilting measurements need to be done with a ruler that doesn't change. Even though I know this (from years of sewing and quilting), I still use a fabric tape measure for knitting. I figure that knitting isn't that precise anyway. Goodness knows that my gauge changes with my mood so blocking will fix most minor measuring differences.