I was on a little bit of a cleaning binge last weekend. I’m not usually one to be working on more than one project at a time. Deadlines usually require that I start and finish a project in a relatively short period of time.
The current block of the month is a different animal. Because it’s been offered for free on the website there is no real urgency to get the quilt done. I just need to stay enough steps ahead of the postings to have time to test out each step before it goes on the web. It’s sort of a background project, quickly set aside for projects that will help pay the bills.
But now that my focus has shifted to book writing, and the projects that will accompany it, I feel like I need to clear the decks. The Christmas Yet to Come quilt was taking up precious storage space that would be better spent on book projects. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.
It’s almost done, really, all of the applique motifs are done, the borders are pieced together. I just needed to get all the parts placed on the background fabric and then I could clean up (put away) all the tools from this project. (Found another pair of scissors in the process.)
As usual, I used flat flowerhead pins to hold the appliques in place. Despite having approximately one gajillion pins, I could see that I wouldn’t have enough of them to pin all of the appliques down. And then I remembered how sharp those buggers are. And how getting constantly poked and scraped by them as I stitch pretty much sucks the joy out of the process.
And then I remembered my basting gun. Because I know you’ll ask, it’s a Micro Stitch (or maybe it’s Micro Tach, they keep changing the name), by Avery Dennison. Your local quilt shop can order one for you. It’s not cheap, it’s like thirty bucks, but it’s a terrific tool for basting the quilt for quilting or basting down applique for stitching. The tacks are super fine and very short and don’t damage the fabric at all. When basting the quilt, the tacks just go straight through to the back. Basting applique isn’t as bulky, so I bring the tack back to the front.
The appliques are held securely in place, and without the pain and extra bulk of all those pins, stitching them down will be a lot more fun. I’ll be using this project as my meditation time, when I need some quiet, mindless, stitching time to focus my thoughts.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 at 8:18 am and is filed under Hand Applique by Machine, Block of the Month. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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