Under the Needle

Busy, busy, busy...the story of my life! Our county fair is coming up in a couple of weeks so my oldest son is frantically trying to make up time training his goat to walk nicely on her collar. His mother goat is doing just fine, but the baby goat he plans on taking is haing no part of the training at all, she just wants to run and play and nibble on our clothes and shoes. He is in 4H and does not have all his projects done yet so that takes up a lot of our time. I hope to enter a quilt in the fair next year in the open class.

I have managed to make time for myself to sew and have had fun making patterns that I have had sitting around for some time.

If you follow me on Instagram you can see the quilt I started this weekend here. I bought the pattern and fabric over 2 years ago and just never put it together. It is coming along nicely and I hope to make some more progress before I go to bed for the night. It feels so good to get something accomplished.

Last week I made some holiday table runners and toppers. I used the scraps from the pole twist table runner to make a couple of small candle mats or mug rugs. Now to just get them quilted. Which I can finally do since my cord for my stitch regulator came in the mail yesterday!

You can't really tell, but the cream fabric is sparkly.

I love my 60 degree ruler! I bought it after I was at a retreat and saw the border print table runners that everyone was making. I cut out quite a few but I don't think I ever finished them. Hopefully I find the box they were packed in soon. For the Halloween runner I just cut 2 1/2" strips and cut out my triangles and sewed them together. I will definitely be making more of these.

I wanted to challenge myself and seeing that I had never made a lonestar block before I decided that it was well past my time to try it. I am a fairly experienced sewer/quilter however; I lost count of how many times I used my seam ripper on this block. It was a learning curve for sure but I absolutely love how it turned out and I see this becoming a focal block in a baby quilt very soon. I love to learn new techniques, even though I have been sewing for almost my entire life (almost 30 years ago my Grandma taught me how) I still learn new things about sewing all the time. I encourage you to step out side your comfort zone and give new blocks and techniques a try.

I am toying with the idea of creating a pattern/tutorial for a table runner that I am designing. I have never attempted a tutorial before but it is on my bucket list to do. Stay tuned for that in the coming future!

I think the kids finally fell asleep, time to go sew for a few minutes and relax.

~Amanda

#ivegotthis