Whew, it’s been a busy week or so and it’s going to be busy for the next three weeks so I will have to try to slip a blog post in whenever I can. I have now started a second part-time job as well as the job at the Cloth Castle not to mention having more quilts to quilt as well. It’s all good though and things should slow down again by the end of the month so in the meantime it’s going to be a test of my time-management skills.
I just recently decided to purchase a new camera. Now, one might wonder why since I have a camera I use on my phone as well as a very good DSLR camera. I love my DSLR camera but it is big and bulky and it works well for video and tripod shots but not so much for just a quick photo. The phone camera is OK for that type of thing but has it’s drawbacks so my partner Kevin and I discussed it and decided to bite the bullet and get a really good point and shoot camera that takes great pictures in low light, takes good video and has a super zoom. It’s nice and compact so I can take it on holidays with me (the countdown is on). It’s small enough to just slip in my bag but not so small I will lose it. This is all a good thing as I won’t be taking my phone with me on this trip. Now I just have to find the time to figure out how to use it before Mom and I head out on the high seas.
One thing that seems to have been coming up recently while working at The Cloth Castle is about ripping vs cutting cotton fabric and the straight of grain. At the Cloth Castle we cut the fabric as opposed to ripping it. Now this is fine except that if you take the fabric home and wash it, sometimes that fabric will go off-grain. I had two customers come into the store last week with pieces of fabric that they wanted to complain about as it was all askew and if they cut it like that they would loose too much fabric. I took a look at it and quickly assessed that there was nothing actually wrong with the piece it simply went off-grain when they washed it and a simple pull corner to corner put everything right.
This got me to thinking, (I know dangerous at the best of times), working with fabric straight of grain was a very basic sewing lesson in first year home EC, however this doesn’t seem to be taught anymore and both woman I talked to last week didn’t even know what I was talking about when I said that the fabric was simply off grain and I showed them how to fix it. So, how many quilters or other sewists out there these days know about fabric straight of grain and how to fix it?
I think this is important and will follow this post up with another this week (when I have a little more time) explaining how to get fabric back on grain.
So look for that post soon. Meanwhile I had two client quilt finishes this week.
You can’t really see the quilting in this quilt as the fabrics were very busy and I used Superior Threads Sew Fine 50 in both top and bottom. I did a different design in each of the borders and used a new circle template for one of the borders. It turned out really nice but as mentioned the quilting didn’t show up in the pictures.
This was another client quilt about a queen size and she just wanted a simple design on it so I chose a simple loop de loop and star all over design done in Aurfil 50 thread in both the top and bobbin. Nothing fancy but it totally works for this particular style of quilt.
Our lives are like quilts – bits and pieces, joy and sorrow, stitched with love.
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