Keeping Busy

The last two weeks I have been in need of a little occupational therapy to keep my mind off the fact that Jennifer and James and our 5 grand kids moved 1200 miles away to Pennsylvania.  At the rate I am going I will be able to use up a lot of my fabric stash.

This weekend I started 4 new placemats and finished them today.  Mind you I don't actually need new placemats because I have a zillion of them but they are one of my favorite things to make.  Instant gratification is something I really like and placemats fill that order.

I started with a bundle of fat quarters that I fell in love with a few months ago.  I loved the fall colors so kept them for a fall project.  If you don't know what a fat quarter is it is 1/4 of a yard of fabric that the stores make from leftovers and have available for quick purchases.  They are my favorites and I almost never enter a fabric store without purchasing a few.  My favorite store offers a deal where if you buy 6 you get one free.  Who could resist that??

I hadn't actually used my sewing machine for embroidery much lately so I decided to put a pumpkin applique in the center.  I need to do more of that because watching a sewing machine sew without actually having to touch it is quite therapeutic.  If you doubt me, go to a sewing store and ask for a demo of an embroidery machine.

If you look closely at these mats you will notice they are each a little different.  They are all made using the same fabrics, just in a different order.  I realized after adding the first orange border that I did not have enough fabric to make them all identical.  I had to do a little creative piecing to get all 4 made.  I already had the fabric for the backside in my "stash" just waiting for a good project to come along.  The only extra fabric I needed to buy was 2/3 yard of the binding fabric.

A few months ago I took a one day class on free motion quilting.  I put what I learned to good use on these.  The center white block is "stippled".  That is the absolute best for taking your mind off troubles.  Normally a sewing machine "pulls" the fabric through the "feed dogs" and "pressure foot".  With free motion you use a special foot that doesn't actual touch the fabric and you drop the feed dogs.  You are the one driving the fabric around to creatively quilt your piece.  Special gloves with rubber fingers are a must for this.  That's how I quilted the entire mat.  Lots of therapy there!

Now a "real quilter" would probably never think to top stitch the front side of the binding.  I HATE hand sewing and will avoid that at all costs.  So I sew my binding to the backside then wrap it around to the front and top stitch.  My project - my way!

I hope you enjoyed this little "lesson" and maybe learned something about quilting.  Writing is also therapeutic so I will probably doing a lot more of it.