When life gives you lemons ...

 I had just started stitching month 3 of Liminal quilt on Tuesday when I couldn't raise the needle. Very annoying. Lizzie was visiting for a few days so she dropped me at the opticians and then dropped off my Atelier 7 to our local dealer for a service. I am going to have to be patient as Rachel has six machines to service before the school term starts and she is closed for two days this bank holiday weekend.

I relayed the news to my husband and suggested that this would be the perfect time to paint the skirting boards in my sewing room. He applied the first coat yesterday whilst waiting to collect me from the hospital and hopefully it will be finished this weekend. In the meantime, my singer featherweight has come out of storage so that I can finish the Liminal borders for month three.

Take a stand bag

Lizzie booked a last minute short trip back to Jersey and arrived last Thursday. I should have been having some procedures done at our local hospital on Thursday, but they cancelled with ninety minutes notice, as someone hadn't signed a form!! I now have that to look forward to this Thursday and I checked - the form has been signed.

We cut out most of our pieces on Wednesday and it was more straight forward than the Running with Scissors case which goes with this bag. Fewer thick layers to negotiate.

I need to order some more fold over elastic as I only have a small amount of the fuchsia pink left and Lizzie needs some too. Lizzie leaves tomorrow so I'm not sure what she's leaving behind for Nick to take in the car in October.

Stash bee BOM - every day is like Christmas

After returning my my third hospital appointment of the week on Friday, I was delighted to receive Gill’s two blocks. They are all going to look so fabulous together.

I was on cake duty at our guild on Saturday, so I took some fabrics to cut out some flying geese units to pair with the four 6” blocks Jane has sewn for me. It didn’t take long to sew these up on Saturday evening.

Only two hospital appointments this week, one of which will be far from stress free!

August UFO complete

 

This is definitely a snuggly winter top and not for this hot weather. I took my time to choose the patter (Jarrah Sweater) and the size (10) o it wouldn't swamp me. Sewn both on my Janome overlocker and my Atelier 7. I don't have a great variety of colours of overlocker thread, so I went with black. I still spend too much time threading the machine, despite it being the air threader machine!! 

View D of the pattern is cropped so I added 4" to the body length and the fabric is thick, so I did a one inch hem instead of 1/2"The sleeves are too long so I need to shorten them before putting away the red thread on my sewing machine. That is my UFO project completed for August but I am sure to be picking up bobbles of the fabric for several weeks to come, it gets everywhere.

Stash bee BOM

It's so exciting, August is my month to be Bee Mama and photos are starting to appear of blocks that have been made for my project. The general brief is stars in red, yellow and orange on a low volume background.

Kerry has used some Elizabeth Hartman and Karen Lewis fabrics that I can spot. I hadn't thought of looking at my screen printed scraps.

Jane has also used some Carolyn Friedlander, Karen Lewis, Elizabeth Hartman and Lizzy's House. She then used the offcuts from the 12" blocks to make some 6" friendship star blocks.

All of the blocks so far are going to work well with the three blocks that I've made.

August UFO challenge

 

I bought this fabric from Rosenbergs in London about four years ago and I have been undecided about what to make with it. Lizzie favours the Oskar top with a zip and more seams than I'd like in a top in this fabric. I am thinking about the Jarrah sweater as I already have the pattern. I just need to measure myself and choose the size.

Running with scissors

 

This is Running with Scissors by By Annie in Tula Pink's grey work. I quilted the fabric on my Janome Atelier 7 with no marking. I just eyeballed the middle of each dot and it has worked out quite well.

This is not a difficult pattern but unusually I didn't precut all of the components and that turned out to be unwise. The stitching of all of the pockets for your tools took longer than expected. I took the project to the Modern Quilt Club July retreat but I wasn't getting along with the machine so it ended up coming home incomplete. 

 

A couple of hours spent sewing and chatting with my daughter, Lizzie and it was ready to bind. There are so many layers to bind that I managed to break a needle and a needle threader, I also mislaid my jar of hand stitching thimbles, needles and scissors. That necessitated buying a metal thimble even though I prefer the Clover silicon thimbles.

 

Just before going on retreat, I noticed that Minki Kim has specific labels for finishing a zipper end. Inspired by this new idea, I sandwiched the zipper end between two identical labels from Sew Quirky. I should have used some basting tape and the stitching could be neater on the label, but finished is better than perfect.