I saw someone doing a stashdown of their crochet/knitting yarn and immediately my thoughts turned to my fabric stash. I have fabric. Maybe not like some people where their stash is a whole room and boxes, and all that. But I do have a significant amount of fabric. So much so that I had declared a moratorium on acquiring more (which unfortunately died an untimely death this past week…). I, apparently, also declared a moratorium on sewing for the last five years so no progress has been made on using the fabric in my stash. Which is why seeing this video inspired me a little.
I brought fabric with me to my mom’s. I have a quilt project I started years ago, so I brought that. And I brought fabric for a baby quilt for a friend. I was very proud of myself. I was going to start the STASHDOWN!!! Except, I visited Dabble Creative Reuse and bought an instruction booklet for a chevron quilt and realized that for the size I wanted, I didn’t have a single contrast fabric that would be big enough. So I went to Suzzie’s Quiltshop and bought some fabric. I also bought a sheet for batting and a sheet for backing from Goodwill. So the Stashdown seems to be going in reverse at the moment…
BUT!!! I watched a video on strip quilting that introduced me to cylinder strips and my god, it has changed my life. I always wondered how they did those offset strips. And now I know!!! Mind blown! You cut your strips and then you stitch the ends together to make a loop. Then, THEN, you rip the seam between the two blocks that will form your new first and last blocks! Genius. I swear, quilters know how to make a process efficient.
Because it is long past time for me to move beyond stitching in the ditch and try some actual quilting on my quilts, I bought myself a foot. I put the darning plate over the Brother feed dogs. I cut a 12.5” square of fabric (times two), and a layer of batting and insulbright, and actually basted them together. Usually I use safety pins, but I thought that the pins would get in the way of the foot. Hahahaha, so do the basting stitches, so that was fun to learn. But as crappy and ugly as my free motion quilting is on this eventual heating pad, I’m learning. And it makes me realize that variable speed machines are a gift. Skills I need to practice are fluid motion and regulating my foot on the presser, so that I have a more consistent speed. But in the meantime, I’m super proud of myself for finally tackling free motion quilting.
This summer, since I am unemployed, I will, hopefully, stitch my little socks off. And practice FMQ skills. Also, the public library has a long arm machine! I need to investigate that some more. But mostly, I just want to get some of these projects done.
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