Saturday, March 15, 2014

Momma said

there'd be days like this, the song says.  And it's been one of those days!  I jumped back on the Singer 128 and fiddled and fiddled and fiddled with that tension but just couldn't get it right.  I saw on someone's tutorial that the spring should be sticking out at about 930 position, but mine just would not bounce or spring that low, it wants to be at midnight.  It will not put correct tension on the top thread at midnight though.  Back at 930, and it lays like a dead fish, also not providing the correct tension.  I could see such promise of wonderful stitches from the backside of the fabric.  I kept running samples while adjusting the dial hopefully until I noticed sparking and smoking from the motor.  I put her Godzilla butt away for the evening, and turned to the quilt block I am working on.


Sometimes I dream that I did things I did not, but I'm pretty sure I blogged about these magic flying geese last night.  How I didn't really catch on how to square them up right until after messing up set one and maybe some of set two.  Putting one of set one and one of set two together was going to be a little tricky as you can see from the photo above.  I have been puzzling in my head how best to get these conflicting sized units to come together.  AHA!


Freezer paper templates, cut to the size of the finished unit!  I figured this way I wouldn't be guessing when to add or take away from the quarter inch allowance.


Then, inspired by SharonSchamber excellence and techniques, I pinned so that the two pieces met at the corners of the templates and used school glue to baste in place before stitching.


A teensy thin line of glue is recommended, and heat set it with an iron please.  Should I apologize for the blurry photo here?  Or the chipped polish on just the thumbnail?  I don't think so.  Plenty of blurry and chipped going on in my life- if it's not in yours feel free to feel smug here.  I don't mind, really!


I carefully stitch just outside the template, except that bulky point makes me swerve a little.  S'OK.


TA DA!  Open and pressed out and oh, my goodness.  The darn bases.  Will have the points cut off as soon as I attach them to anything. Also, the side unit is not the same size as the flying geese unit.  The whole funky thing is going in the shoe box of bastard quilt units, to be used as whatever until one day maybe I'll make some piece-y animal softies or something out of them.  Momma also used to say, try again.  This magic method is getting one more shot, just because I'm mad at it for wasting so much time and fabric already.  Next time I'm using pretty fabric too, Nyah!

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