Month: September 2010

I learned a new trick for pressing fusible appliqué pieces. I have one off those presses that looks like two mini ironing boards that go together when you pull the handle down. It’s really great for fusing things. The only drawback is that the upper board, which is the iron, doesn’t raise up very far in the back. I’m always getting little burns on my knuckles when trying to spread things out on the board. I tried gloves, but it’s hard to work with the appliqué pieces wearing gloves. It occurred to me to lay things out on my Teflon pressing sheet and then carry that to the press. I can hold the sides of the Teflon sheet while sliding it onto the board and under the iron. Then it’s easy to gently hold the fabric near the front of the board with one hand while sliding the Teflon sheet out from under the fabric with the other hand. Sometimes it still needs a little smoothing, but not enough that I’m likely to get my fingers burned.

Another thing I learned about pressing fusible appliqué is not to use the Teflon sheet over the appliqué when pressing with the big press. For some reason, it makes everything ripple. Parchment paper works much better to keep any little melts of fusible off the iron.

I made some play oven mitts for the grandchildren last week. The dog chewed the corner off of the mitt that came with their play kitchen, and they used that little mitt a lot when they were playing. My daughter brought me the chewed up mitt and asked me to make a new one for them. I was watching the most recent episode of The Quilt Show featuring Camille Roskelley. In that show she talks about adding alphabet letters to her quilts. That was the inspiration for making two oven mitts, each of which had an initial for each of the children. They won’t be able to argue about whose mitt they’re wearing!

I used the font, AR Julian. Camille Roskelley showed how to use a Word Processor to create the applique letter. The next time I do letters, I am going to use EQ7, as that is a better way for me to keep a permanent copy of what I have done. I was able to find the mirror image in my printer setup behind several layers of setup screens. I printed this in mirror image, then traced it onto fusible, pressed the fusible to the fabric and cut out the letters. The fabric for the mitts was machine quilted on my domestic machine with straight cross-hatching.

Here’s a photo of the mitts. I thought they were just as cute as could be. Note that one child is right handed and the other is left handed.

It’s hard sometimes to find balance in this life. I love mornings and that is the time that I blog, exercise, and create. Sometimes there’s just not enough morning to do everything; thus my blog has suffered the last few weeks. I think it started with the trip to Arizona in August when we were making decisions about gamma knife surgery for Ezri.  However, I got an email from sewcalgal this morning about being a member of the Team of Accuquilt bloggers. I’m going to put renewed effort into writing.

Last week I posted a video with a pinwheel tessellation block that I really love. Rather than set the blocks side by side as most tessellations are, I decided to use an alternate block and sashing for a little change up. I have made the blocks in Carolina blue and will have them together for a photo later today. Here are pictures of my EQ7 drawing.  The first picture does not show the block outlines so you can see what the quilt will look like when pieced. The second picture shows the block outline and that will give you an idea of how the quilt will go together.