11.6.14

wip's...

These  6 snowmen table runners and 5 pillow covers are coming along. I've learned how to load the Gammill quilter with the backing fabric, float the batting (and tops) then pin my smaller tops such as pillow covers and table runners to quilt all in one running item. Thanks to the "quilter man" for using the term "float" during my lesson.

It's very time efficient and is giving me the experience in loading and positioning tops before I tackle a quilt. I am quilting with my favorite design, free motion quilting, and decided to play with straight line quilting.  Hey, on this quilter there is a vertical lock and a horizontal lock feature that makes it a breeze.  It was easy and they look good. 

These wip's will be ready for the "finish up Friday" posting over at Crazy Mom Quilts and should be in the shop by Friday as well. 

In a previous posting I admitted these snowmen centers were cut down from previous projects, but I may not have admitted how long ago these were started. My goal is to chisel down on some pre-cut squares, projects started but not finished that are filling many, many, many storage totes in my sewing room. There will be many, many echo::home goods projects in the future. 

This next photo shows snowmen table runners hanging on one of my shelves in the sewing room.  Can you find the other wip?  It's another quilted pillow cover.  In reality all of that fabric is but a small portion of what I have in my stash....and it is all wip's.

Installing 6 zippers, ugh, my least favorite part of sewing.  I've got hundreds, literally hundreds of zippers that I've picked up over the years at thrift stores so no need to invest a fortune in those notions. I don't really enjoy installing zippers, never have and probably never will. Having the feature of a zipper rather than an envelope closure makes these pillow covers truly reversible. Well worth the effort.

Now that I've taken a break from squaring up the table runners, back to the sewing room and get the binding on the table runners and the pillows all zipped up. 

As I was finishing up quilting on the table runners last evening I had about 20" left of the back fabric and batting left on machine so I decided to cut a 15"x 45" piece of green print fabric to make another, whole cloth, table runner.  

That will be a surprise and may even be listed in the shop, if not I may decide to do a give away. Either way I just could not let that section of quilt backing go to waste.  

Watch for the finish up post tomorrow.