Happy National Sewing Month!

Happy September (and goodbye, summer)  😔    Did you know that September is was National Sewing Month?  (Well, I started this post on September 1.  Now the month has flown.)  So let's catch up!


As I mentioned in my last post, I've been finishing up the blocks for the Otsego quilts (original post here).  The blocks are *DONE* but somehow I mis-counted something, and with the blocks that I have, the quilts will be just a bit too short.  I don't have enough fabric to make one more row on each quilt.

So while I ponder the fix, I decided to move on to another UFO, the fireplace quilt, and to dive into Bonnie Hunters's new Leader and Ender Challenge, a rail fence quilt.  More on that one in the next post.

THE FIREPLACE QUILT - Heading into the finish

Last November I made a New Year's Resolution to finish the fireplace quilt by Christmas, 2017.  This was the mosaic quilt that I'd "designed" by uploading a photo to the Victoria and Albert Museum website,  which broke down the image into squares and HSTs.  So this is how it started:

The original image:

The image as a quilt pattern:

Cutting instructions: 

You may remember, I was so excited about this quilt, but ran into a BIG problem of my own making.  I'd tried to save some time, effort, and fabric by making HSTs from already-cut squares.  Of course, the HSTs were too small (duh, I knew better).

Earlier this year,  I had laid out all the pieces and bundled them up by rows.

So now, as I hit the reset button,  all the HSTs still needed to be trimmed and all the squares had to be cut down to the size of the HSTs (1-3/4 inches).  Fun! (not).  I accomplished this while I was on personal retreat at the cabin in Michigan.  Then I finally started to sew.  The the seams needed to be about 1/8" to achieve the size that I had planned.  That has meant seams coming apart and corners of HSTs getting chewed up.

Nevertheless, she persisted.  I've gotten all the rows sewn together and am now embarking on finishing up the quilt top.  It's slow going --  it's hard to get the seams to nest, especially since they were sewed on 3 different machines.  When the top is together, I'll iron it onto interfacing with 2" squares that I'd originally expected to use.  I'm hoping that will minimize additional fraying and stabilize the quilt.

Current status:

The rows lined up and ready!  I expect that the quilting will help to define the main parts of the image -- flames, logs, etc.  I'm still looking forward to the finished product!


Next time I'll show you the Leaders and Enders project.  Until then...