All goes well till the thread runs out

Today was the perfect day for sewing. Almost. I had a day off from my work, my son was with his grandparents, husband went for mountain walking. There was just me and my sewing machine. All went well till I run out of the thread. Is there some Murphy's law like that? I bet there is. Anyway, today I felt much better when quilting. It wasn't such a chaos like I felt the first time. It is still very hard for me to finish a big quilt like this, but at least I wasn't thinking what the heck am I doing. :)

It's far from being perfect - I can see it's hard for me to push the fabric, so the machine could make even stitches. So, there are places where the stitches are long as should, but some where they are very short as the fabric didn't move properly. And I put the blame for that on me (not machine).

So, the quilt is stil in progress and now awaits for a new thread, but it doesn't mean I have nothing to do. I'm going to learn something new and here is the sampler piece I'm working on now to get the idea. When I do some practice on this I will move on to make the bigger piece. Do you know what I have in my mind? :)

{After FNSI}

Yesterday I did some progress on my first big quilt. The blocks were made during the Patchwork Squared Quilt Along. Some time ago I made the top then the back and I was left with putting this together.

Last weekend I basted the quilt and yesterday started the machine quilting. I didn't do much progress in this, well... it is tough job, especially for a beginner like me. But I learnt some things, as one says that you learn best on your own mistakes.

First of all, the quilt is BIG beast for me and at first I felt I couldn't tame it and begin sewing. But then after a couple of minutes I managed to organize it a bit.

Lesson no.1 - I should have muh more safety pins for basting than I have... I mean much more.

Lesson no. 2 - Using gloves when quilting on machine might be very useful. I didn't have them and now I can see that they may help a lot.

As I mentioned I didn't do much, so probably I will continue this one during the next Friday Night.

{FNSI}

This month I signed up for FNSI to get me motivated for sewing. I have prepared the quilt that I want to finish, so I'm ready :). Are you?

Work in progress

The tablecloth I've been working on for some time is almost on the finish. I have one square left for needle-weaving. The original pattern I wanted to do changed slightly over time. I thought of doing all squares the same with greek cross filling but as I started the first one routine took over and without thinking I did something else. So I was in a way forced to make changes, but still the center square will be with greek cross.

I'm also thinking whether to add some sort of border to the edges of the tablecloth. I wanted to keep it simple so I thought of 3 squares in the middle only but now I'm wondering if to add some more embroidery.

And once it's done I'll have to think of some better photographer than me! This fabric is red, threads are red and I have no idea how to make it look the same on the photo as it is in real.

Celebrating Autumn

On the prevoius post I mentioned about Celebrate Color event that is going on for the next 3 months. I love such things, as they are great insiration to me and also quite good motivation to make something new. So, kudos to Rachel for organising this.

I was worried a bit that with lack of time I won't be able to join, but I decided to use some scraps to make an Autumn inspired pillow. Once I made such tablemats and I still had some fabrics left + nine patch squares ready for use. So I came up with such a simple pillow that is now proudly decorating my living room. For me personally brown is the first color I think of in terms of Autumn (though there are many more I'd put in this category as well).

Though the pillow is very simple, there were some "done for the first time" things for me.

Instead of envelope closure I added the zipper to it. I wouldn't do it if I didn't find a tutorial. I know there are many helpful tutorials on the Internet for this tricky stuff, but I used this one - thank you Katie :). Another first time thing is I tried to finish the quilt using in-the-ditch method, as I was just curious of how it would look like in the end. It looks nice, but I will wait some time till I try it again, at least when using my sewing machine. I sew on very slow motion, but still it was hard for me to keep exactly along the seam - more experience needed :). So, I'll do some more sewing and then maybe one day I'll try again.

Oh, and in case you wanted to know, the fabrics I used are from Moda Cherrish Nature collection. I also used one of these fabrics for the back of the pillow:

I have also one more pillow in my mind, this time with some hand stitching part. If time allows I'll try to make it for next month' Celebrate Color.

One update to this - as Wendy suggested me, I'm linking this post to her "Learn a New Technique" webside. By the way it's great idea to share our new endeavors in craft :).

Celebrate Color with StichedinColor blog

I have a couple of blogs that I really enjoy visiting. It's to fun to read, fun to watch and LOTS of great hints and ideas for sewing and stitching. One of them is Stichted in Color run by Rachel. She mostly writes about sewing and quilting but she's also fan of stitching and crochet.

Starting from today she's hosting a 3-month party called Celebrate Color with fall as the main theme. There will be a lot of inspiration, a lot of sharing our own ideas and some cool contests with prizes as well :). I will be there for sure, at least as the viewer :).
Cheers!

Trying to keep decent order

The chaos was sneaking more and more into my stitching & sewing stuff. It was so evil that each time I wanted to work on something, first I had to do a turn around all rooms in house to get everything in one place. And finally I said enough:). I could see on the internet quite a lot of boxes that would satisfy each embroiderer's needs to keep all the stuff in one neat place. Forunately the online polish shop where I buy frequently had some of them to choose. I bought 3 boxes where I can keep my threads, bobbins, scissors, cutters, needles and so forth. Yeah, I could do it for a long time... Anyway, they are made by Prym company that has a whole collection called: "click-box". The main idea is that you can buy multiple boxes of different sizes and they can be easily joined together, so you have everything you need together. The only thing I'm worried a bit is that this "clicking" mechanism may get worn out after some time of using. But we'll see. So far so good - the chaos had to move back to the corner of the closet. And I'm thinking of buying more - there are also boxes to keep mouline. I don't use it now, but I have some threads, so it would be nice to keep them in the place designed for them :).

Another story is where to keep my fabrics. I have some for embroidery and some for sewing, the trend is that this pile is getting bigger and bigger, so I will really need some place for this. My dream is to have my own sewing room - maybe something like one of these. Well, dreams :).