Progress and Set-backs

Well the Easter long weekend is over. I made some progress on the flannel quilt and cottages x-stitch but things on the quilt didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped.

Flannel Quilt Firstly I had to purchase another piece of polar fleece to use as wadding because the piece I bought on Thursday wasn't long enough. So on Saturday morning I had to go out and buy another piece. This time I made sure it was sufficiently long. Before I went out I laid out the quilt top and back on the kitchen floor to check their widths. It was then I discovered the top was a few cms wider than the back. This probably happened because I didn't trim the borders before sewing them on because they didn't seem to need it. They were 1/4" wider than was stated in the kit pattern so the extra width may have been due to this. Anyway, without any extra fabric for the back I had to improvise something so I decided to use the leftover pieces of border sewn together and cut in half and add these to either side of the back. After I had the polar fleece I taped the back of the quilt to the kitchen floor and laid out the polar fleece wadding and the top and pinned the three layers together.

On Easter Monday I sat down to do the machine quilting using my 'Big Foot' walking foot. After completing one stitch in the ditch line the quilting foot broke at the screw so progress ground to a halt. I popped out to Spotlight, not even sure if it was open on a holiday. It was but they didn't carry any sewing machine parts so I decided to try a sewing machine centre in Camberwell. They were actually closed but the owners were in the shop cleaning up and told me when I phoned that they would let me in and serve me so I quickly hurried over there. Not only was I able to get a walking foot so I could continue with my machine quilting, I also learned that the foot I was using was the wrong one for stitch in the ditch and I could more easily use a straight walking foot which would make my job easier. I finished the machine quilting of the flannel quilt by early afternoon. The back is not as tight between the quilting lines as I would like but there are no puckers and it all looks good. So the next steps will be to trim the edges, sew on the binding and hand stitch the binding--then finished! I will do more work on this later in the week.

Cross-Stitch In the evenings I've been forging ahead with my Cottages x-stitch. I am completing the details to either side of the narrow yellow house. I don't have much more to go then I have the back-stitching of both houses to finish.