WIP Wednesday: The Best Laid Plans

For FO Friday last week I really wanted to show you my finished Who's Hungry? Quilt, and then I had already decided what my next quilt was going to be (hint: more owls). Unfortunately my sewing machine Shannon had different ideas. I had the thread in hand, used the hand wheel to catch the bobbin and then the needle came up and wouldn't go back down again. It was jammed =(

Here is my quilt sitting on my floor done except for lack of binding:


Here are some pictures of my adventure with my sewing machine today:


It took me two buses, half an our and a trip to St. Paul to get it looked at. And when your sewing machine weighs about 20lbs trust me it is a haul. Look at all that metal!

And the worst of it all?

The person looked at it and said it might not be fixable =( a real tragedy.

In better news WIP Wednesday news

Here is the progress on my noro scarf for the My Other hobby swap Knit-a-long I'm using sock instead of the prescribed worsted and cast 33 instead of 39 stitches I'm hoping to make a somewhat comically long skinny scarf. I'm still trying to decide if I like the fact that it currently looks like a completely different scarf on the section I'm working on than the start.

potentially stupid (updated)

Earlier this week I did something really silly. I ironed on my cutting board and my little makeshift board isn't very heat proof and the resulting heat from my iron warped my cutting mat (oops). Feeling like I should have known better (because I totally should have) I began looking for ways to fix my cutting mat. Number one response was "leave it on the sidewalk for a day and let the sun warm it flat again. Seeing as my sidewalk currently looks like this


I don't really think that it is an option... yeah. The wood plank is to cover up the giant crater in my sidewalk.

I also read then warm water might do the trick so I gave it a bath on and off for a few hours yesterday... still didn't work.

currently I just have some heavy books on it lately hopefully it'll straighten itself out. I have a smaller mat I'm using right now but cutting on it'll probably get quickly annoying.

I'm a liberal arts major we really don't have heavy text books.


***UPDATE****

I really am potentially stupid, I forgot that one of my roommates is a chemistry major
much better.

Geesey McNinepatch McFail

Two weekends ago I set out to make block number five of the block-a-palooza, I was excited for the no waste method of geese and cut all the proper fabrics, after lots of marking and careful cutting this is what I ended up with:

it is not the right size, it is not even it is NOT pretty.

That is when I gave up and made a mug rug. Being me it is a rainbow log cabin. I've come down on the side of Mug Rugs are kind of not practical and kind of silly. But cute and pretty and nice. So that's what I've fallen on.


This weekend I started again with the geesey McNinepatch pattern and this time instead of trying the no waste method of geese I made all the cuts. cut all the big squares in two diagonals and all the little squares in halves and made sure everything was squared up. The result?

Not really much better than the first but is is slightly straighter and slighly closer to the right size. sooo win? Also, my wonderunder came in today so look for blocks 6-8 soon!

Bloggers block-a-palooza

So after two weeks of looking and another three days of realizing "Hey I have enough fabric in my stash to to make that! I caved. I decided I was going to do the blogger's block-a-palooza. Read more about it here . Several of the blogs I follow are doing it including my personal favorite quilting blog Oh, Fransson!So despite the fact that I am completely outclassed and have never made a flying geese or a pinwheel in my life. Despite the fact that allegedly there is applique involved. Despite the fact I have been sewing for maybe six months (just under) I am going for it. Late last night I embarked on a journey and tried to make my very first flying geese patches. It did not go that well. I went to bed satisfied that I made my first ever and that the block was much much bigger than I thought it would be.

I took a look at it again and noticed what a complete and total failure it was. I picked it apart back to its nine-patch component and measured the flying geese patches to see if there were any I could save or if I should just start over. Not a single was was 6.5" the size it was supposed to be the closest was a quarter of an inch off and none of them were remotely square so I decided to redo it. all eight of the flying geese. wasting the little bit of the solid I have for this quilt. hopefully I can post an update soon. and my block will actually be square and or big enough that I can square up...