Sunday, September 29, 2013

Paper ... ahhh!!

IIn one of my earlier lives, rather my life prior to children and family, I was a legal secretary.  It was always about pushing paper ... I pushed it to my boss, he pushed it to me, I pushed it to another secretary and her boss, they pushed it back ... accckk!  My life as a stay at home mom, wife and everything else has also involved lots of paper decisions.  My husband pays the bills, so all that stuff gets pushed to him.  Now my life as a quilter, teacher, and longarmer ... Well, the paper is endless!  There is a pattern to keep, where do you file it.  By season, size of pattern, type of pattern?  And then, do you put the patterns out where you can see them or do you put them in a file so they're tucked away?

This just makes me crazy ... I want things nice and organized, but it is a constant struggle to keep it that way.  It just means that I get into my sewing stuff every couple months and reorganize it all.  Weed things out, like patterns I have had for years, never made and now are so out of style will never make.  

In going through my sewing room in the last few weeks, I came across several fall, unfinished projects. One of them was a Halloween broken dish quilt from a year ago that was only needing a border.  I actually had the border with the quilt, I just had never put the border on.  I attached the border, made a backing, and quilted the whole thing with bright orange thread.  I love it!

I used several lines of fabric I had charm packs for.  One of them was Sandy Gervais Trick or Treat - very old.
Because the pieced blocks were going to be so bright (for me), I chose several different beige tone prints for the alternating solid squares.  
See the orange thread?  It's Glide, and I bought it last year in anticipation of finishing this quilt.  I chose a bottom line taupe prewound for the bobbin. I've never used those before, and did not want to take the time to wind my own bobbins with this quilt.  I thought the tension looked great on the back, but I did not love the cardboard wounds.  I just bought several colors of bottom line to try in my bobbin, so we'll see if I like the thread any better when I wind them myself.
I was thinking the quilt looked really drab until I added the three borders.  All that beige really needed to be stopped by a small black border.  Then the orange border made it pop, and the outer border was just a really fun polka dot with some green in it.  It was exactly what I was looking for to finish it off.  Now all I have to do is bind it.  So excited!!!!!  One more unfinished project, done!

Look at this cute little 7 month old playing with daddy's soccer ball!  I just want to grab that cute little face and kiss it!

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