It's Christmas Time!

Okay, so, BBW was driving me crazy, and not in a good way. I realized that one of the things I like about quilting was the repetition and ease of it. It's not that it doesn't engage the brain,  but there is a rather soothing quality to the clear destination a quilt can provide. BBW was too much work, so I just wasn't working on it, which was no fun. I have a lot of ideas I want try out, and spending time not working on something fun was no good. 

So I started my Christmas Placemat plan.

And I got Quilt Pro 5, which doesn't seem as cool as Electric Quilt, but what can you do? I ran into a few pitfalls. I looked up placemat sizes online, and made the above pattern at 12 x 18. More on that later.

I also got the Alto Quilt-Cut system, which takes a part of quilting that I'm not to good at and made it a lot easier. All of my cut pieces came out uniform, and it took less than half the time. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than what I was doing before.


And here is one "placemat" finished. I found out some things along the way, the first being that the initial double square I had planned for the middle wasn't really the best thought out. I took a pre-planned block from the Quilt-Pro, and stuck it into my layout. I checked the yardage requirements and thought I was good to go. Turned out that the middle square bits didn't fall into 1/8th inch increments. That was no good, as I couldn't really get a consistent cut between the pieces. I settled for just a plain square, after I cut out the bits for the more complicated middle square. The second issue was that I still am not getting a good consistent 1/4 inch seam.

I'm going to blame my sewing machine. :) Oh, it's probably me, but this machine isn't exactly top of the line. It's something my mom bought, so I have no idea when or where it came from. I taped a piece of paper to mark where the 1/4 inch seam is, but sometimes I make and sometimes I don't. I would like to get a new machine, but the Internet isn't being very helpful. I'm wary of going to a sewing machine shop, because I don't know which machines are rated well (there isn't a clear consensus online as to how brands compare) and I don't want to get some salesman who is working on commission. Consumer Reports is coming out with sewing machine ratings in February, but I don't know if I can wait that long! My friend Leslie has a Janome, so maybe I'll test hers out.


Oooh, another problem. 12x18 really isn't big enough for a placemat! I should have just looked at one I already had! This photo is my "placemat" on top of a correctly sized placemat. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself at this point, with all the cut out pieces I didn't use due to poor planning, and a wrong final size, due to poor planning. It was almost enough to make me give the whole thing up. But when the goings get tough, the tough make table runners! I used my original design idea, and sewed them together for a table runner. Which may or may not be how table runners were invented in the first place.

Here was another issue I should have thought of. I've made sawtooth blocks before, for my first quilt, and they involve flying geese. I didn't really think about it when I was cutting out the triangles in the photo. It was what Quilt-Pro recommended to cut out, so cut I did! I forgot that last time I made these, you use rectangles, and cut them down to the triangle part. It seemed like a lot of extra work at the time, but making them with the triangles already cut was more frustrating. The points were very flimsy and harder to pin and get through machine than if I had done them correctly.

This would make any long-time quilter laugh, and it's for posterity, but here's my stash. That's all I've got so far. If I'm still doing this in 20 years, I'll look back at this photo and laugh.