Monday, November 30, 2015

I had a disappointing two days at the craft sale, although by knitting through the day on Saturday I finished an extra project to add to the table on Sunday. I had lots of compliments, and lots of interest, but very few sales. By the second day I was making decisions on what I would do with everything that didn’t sell; all but one item has a home. The fancy slide show I attempted to show you in my last post didn’t come through in the e-mail subscriptions; I have updated the page so if you go to the website you should be able to see everything. If there happens to be something there that catches your eye please let me know in the next couple of days. I would be glad to pass items along to you at no cost. As a fellow crafter said she would rather give things away to people or causes she supports than give things away by lowering her prices; I feel the same way.

I managed to waste most of the morning doing a clean up of my two studio rooms – enough of a clean that I was able to get back to some sewing this afternoon. I am behind on birthday cards, Christmas projects, and a couple of Guild projects. I didn’t make much of a dent in the list this afternoon but I tried.

My first project was paper-piecing; I love paper piecing. Except I ended up with one piece of fabric too small (but didn’t notice it until I’d added a couple of other pieces), I put two of the larger pieced-pieces together wrong but I didn’t notice that until I’d attached the third piece. It all worked out in the end and I was ready to start quilting.

The stitch in the ditch went well and so I decided to do some straight-line fancy stuff in the centre of the piece. That also went well and I only had a bit of free-motion quilting and it would be ready for binding. That quick bit of free-motion took the better part of three hours! My thread kept breaking and I’m not sure why; I changed my needle, I re-threaded everything, I cleaned my bobbin casing, and I powered my machine off and restarted it. I could only get a few dozen stitches in and the thread would break. I’m not even going to suggest that I figured out the problem, I was just happy to eventually finish it. I spray-basted the piece and I’m wondering if the threads were catching on the glue that was holding the sandwich together. I don’t often use the spray but when I have in the past I don’t remember having this much trouble.

I think there is time before dinner to get a project (or two) packed up for the bee tomorrow.