A Perfect Sewing Day

On my last post I said I would be working on bindings or getting distracted by a new project. Well, I got distracted. I have had this bag bookmarked to make for quite a while and finally whipped it up. It's an easy pattern. It's by the fabulous Kathy Mack of Pink Chalk Studios and you can find it here. I've been collecting home dec fabrics whenever I see some I like and I liked this combo. By the way, that roll of paper I have had forever. It was my Mom's in her sewing room and I have had it for years. It came in really handy for my next distraction I will show you.

 Today arrived with the first snow storm since last October-I am not kidding-we have had no storms since last October so it was a perfect day for some sewing. We got about 8 inches here which is a small snowstorn for NH. I have been using my stash quite a lot these past two years and when ever I am doing a project I slice up any scraps into strings and dump them in this basket. I wanted to someday make some kind of string quilt or a spider web quilt and then I found this tutorial I liked.

There is a quilt-a-long being sponsored by Sew Lux Fabric and Gifts and the easy tutorial for these blocks is here. These block are super simple and work up fast. The common foundation of the white string looks great with a few blocks done. This is semi-paper pieced. I say semi because you only sew one seam through the paper so ripping off the paper is a breeze.

I did make a couple of changes that may help you if you try it. The tutorial calls for a 6 inch square of paper for the foundation but I am using a 6.5 inch. The reason I am doing that is because I have an Accuquilt Go Cutter and the 6.5 inch die so I am cutting my paper with the Go. Did you know you can cut paper with it and not damage the die? So if you have this die, use it! The next thing I did was cut my white strings on the length of the grain, not the width. There are a lot of diagonal seams going on and I think you need a strong foundation in the middle that is less likely to stretch. As you can see below this is what you end up with on the front and back and the directions call for you to use the grid on the cutting mat and proceed to cut basically on the edge of the paper from the back. But I was finding that cutting blind like that, I was not getting quite in the center of my white strings sometimes.

Then I remembered my favorite tool in my sewing room. My Precision Trimmer which also is 6.5 inches. So I ripped the paper off the back before I trimmed and I did my trimming from the front so I could place that diagonal line on the ruler right down the center of the white string. Perfect block!

So that's what I have been up to. That and talking to my cat. She was watching me sew and I kept saying, "These blocks are so much fun!" It's just me and the cat here most days so I gotta talk to someone.

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