Friday, MyDay

What did I want to do for ME, today? Tuesdays are devoted to The Dreadfuls, but Fridays are just for me. So how did I want to splurge?

My first choice was mundane in the extreme: I needed to mend my favorite sheets, probably for the last time. I found the last excess piece from this project and used it to mend the latest threadbare spot. After this, I'm going to have to look for another set of sheets.

After that was accomplished, I ironed my lastest flimsy: Angry Birds (Ugh!)

 

This one was a bit simpler than the Sugar Skull flimsy because there were only 5 main fabrics to deal with (the Birds, the orange fabric, the brown zigzag, and the yellow and green frames). To compare, here's the Sugar Skull:

We won't count the number of cats involved when comparing the two. It's interesting to look at the two of them, knowing they're fundamentally the same pattern, isn't it?

Okay, so the flimsy was ironed, flung, photographed, folded and stashed atop the Sugar Skull flimsy for sandwiching later. Next up: the last N1C flimsy on the storage rack. I had decided a few weeks ago that I'd flesh it out to 70x90 with a couple of borders so I pulled it, and the two border fabrics I'd selected, off the rack and set to work. (In the process of figuring out the border sizes I realized I'd've been well served by Past Me if I had made note of the raw block size. I ultimately decided to go with 7.75" as the best guess.)

That took the rest of the day (no photos yet) and now I'm relaxing on my comfy recliner and letting all the kinks in my back melt away. It's been a good, productive, satisfying Friday.

There was a disconcerting moment this afternoon. I found a basting pin on the dining room floor and when I went back into my studio to put it away (bottom wire shelf, metal tin on the right) I was momentarily discombobulated. What was wrong with this picture?

It was so . . . open! Where did all this white space and clear area come from?!?

I've had flimsies hanging over this area for so long that seeing wall space all of a sudden took me aback!

then

now

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday was good too. I put the final stitches in the hand-sewn binding of my latest quilt, threw it in the washer (scalding hot water) and dryer (as hot as the poor old thing can get) and it's ready to be donated.

86" x 69"

Two realizations from this one: there wasn't much (if any) difference in sewing down the bias vs straight-cut binding, 

and 

there's a LOT of shrinkage from quilting and washing/drying a quilt! This started out as a generous 70" x 90" flimsy, but ended up significantly under those dimensions. I've adjusted my raw guidelines to 74" x 94" for future quilt tops, with the assumption/hope the finished product will measure much closer to 70" x 90" than this one did.

As for bias vs straight binding: as I was sewing this binding down and wondering why I don't always use straight-cut binding pieces, I remembered that I really like the look of striped fabrics for bindings, especially when cut on the bias (because if the lines aren't perfectly straight, there's no way to tell!) It's been a fun way to shop for fabric souvenirs when traveling and visiting Magpies, so I'm going to continue cutting/using bias strips for binding my quilts.