Monday, January 9, 2017

I spent most of the morning getting packages ready for the mail, deposits ready for the bank, and patterns ready for a fabric swap.

Tomorrow’s bee is at the clubhouse and I usually take hand stitching to work on. I had hoped to have my Community Quilt ready to bind but that isn’t going to happen. I’m getting a bit more adventurous with the ruler and Stacia’s suggestion of backstitching the ends and snipping them will save a lot of time. I have one of five panels finished and the ends are tied in. Things should go faster now that I’m backstitching and snipping, and I’m even faster because I’m using my seldom-used automatic scissors that my sewing machine offers. With this in mind I decided I wouldn’t go to the bee tomorrow but would stay home and quilt.

I needed some yellow batik for a project and there wasn’t any at the fabric store last week. Carola told me she had some so, after running my errands, I stopped at her place for coffee. She had a couple of pieces that just might work. I decided I would go to the bee after all and work on tracing the pieces I need for my project. As I read the instructions on the pattern I was a bit confused – this is a fusible piece and not appliqué. I went online and looked at a couple of tutorials by the designer; I think I’ll be able to make sense of it but I’ll need to take my time and concentrate – not something to be done in a crowd.

So I was back to deciding not to go to the bee. The only project that isn’t ready to be photographed for the quilt show is my Celtic Crystals. Although I usually take hand stitching to the clubhouse there is usually lots of space for machines because we have a much smaller crowd. So I was back on again about going. My next step in the project though will require some cutting – again not something done easily at the clubhouse – so that’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of the afternoon.