To Do Tuesday - 21/12/22

Last week was a whirlwind of Christmas shopping. Not very organised this year...went to the city about four times! Now there is only food shopping left which we will have to do later in the week. I am looking forward to just relaxing.

Last week's goals were small, but achievable

- stitch a simple charm square quilt together from fabric that has been sitting in my stash for many years. 

- make a start on a new pattern, i.e. get the cutting of the fabric done

- prepare for Christmas which of course we left to the last minute again!

Well, Christmas shopping done ✔

Made a start on that little Charm Square Quilt. Had the squares already ready to go and managed to baste it and start the quilting. ✔

So pink and very cute. Decided beforehand that I wanted to do one of those edge-to-edge designs over it and made a start on it.

Explained this elsewhere on the blog (see one of the posts HERE) how I do this on a sitdown longarm machine. In brief...I use Golden Threads paper for this where I trace the design on and then stitch over this. Time consuming...yes, but so rewarding in the end.

Chose the Daisy Dotz design from Urban Elementz again, even though I have a number of other flower designs on hand. Thought that the leaves had to be in there as the fabric has little ladybugs on there. Love doing this...so relaxing.

This is what this looks like

I trace the design with a blue water soluble pen (you could also stitch through several pieces of papers without thread to avoid having to re-trace this over and over again). This ensures that I do not get accidental marks on my fabric. If anything it will be the blue residue of the marking which, of course, washes out.

Here are the first two rows

Love that design! As you can see I do take the paper out as I go along except for that little bit down the bottom...this is where the next two rows line up. Its got the last row stitched out and bitses of the next row drawn on, so you have two places to line up the next lot. Also check my stitching at this stage...tension, points and generally to get a bit of a look what that looks like. I do leave the basting in until I am totally finished and the pins on the bottom definitely will be removed when the next row is placed. I do attach the paper with removable glue dots (and the line of pins on the bottom and top) so that nothing moves too much as I go along.

Have several more rows to go since then and will finish this hopefully before Christmas.

Also made a start on a new pattern, however realised that my block sizes were wrong (like a nine patch that measured 10in???). As this is going to be a custom layout that meant painstakingly going in (EQ8) and changing every single element of the design to accommodate the change in block size. Got it done, however have not cut out my fabric as yet. That will have to wait for another day.

Linking up to Texas Quilt Gal for To Do Tuesday and wishing everybody a very Merry Christmas with lots of nice food, good company and hopefully some quiet time for a little bit of relaxed quilting.

Also linking up to Freemotion Mavericks at Quilting & Learning- What a Combo

Karin