There are three things that I'm quite nervous about in terms of my sewing:
1) Zips (normal, invisible, you name it, I hate it)
2) Paper piecing (had some mild success, total fluke)
3) Giving my work away (what if *they* hate it?)
1) Zips (normal, invisible, you name it, I hate it)
2) Paper piecing (had some mild success, total fluke)
3) Giving my work away (what if *they* hate it?)
There's also one area that brings me out in full on cold sweats - free motion quilting.
So, the obvious course of action when it came to our friends' birthdays and engagement party - offer to make them a paper pieced FMQ'ed cushion of course!
Deciding that I needed to bite the bullet before I lose all notion of free time when baby arrives, I showed L various patterns and gave her free rein over my stash. We picked a circle of flying geese in orange and purple, their wedding colours.
The paper piecing went remarkably well (Once I printed the right pattern pieces from here), with only one minor moment of panic when the needle fell out - oops!
I used this mental orange fabric for the backing, and sort of made up a method of concealing a zip - the tutorials which I read just wouldn't make sense in my somewhat addled brain.
And so we come to the FMQ. Armed with my new Aurifil from Cindy at Fluffy Sheep, which feels lush, and having practiced as Trudi taught me at FQR, I set off to conquer my own little Everest - and I'm quite pleased (and modest too!)
I'll be the first to admit that it's many miles away from perfection, but it doesn't look like a total mess. I just hope that they like it!
The biggest problem that I faced was the foot catching on the seams, of which there are quite a few. Any advice on how to deal with this gratefully appreciated. I used the Leah Day craftsy class techniques to set up my machine, if that makes a difference?
