The Last Friday Finish of 2017

Big finishes this week.  It is amazing how much sewing I can get done when I don't go to work!

My new walking foot made a huge difference on the pad project!!

The reusable sanitary pads project (Days for Girls) started with good intentions.  In October, when the other teachers and I finished with the pillowcases for Harvey victims we thought this would be another good cause.  I had plenty of materials on hand (surprise! surprise!) and we dove right in.  It turned out to be way more than we could chew.

Cute & practical

The straight sewing on the pillowcases was just right for their beginning to intermediate skills.  These were just the opposite.  Lots of layers, lots of curves, and zig zag stitching that needed to be precise.  All the fabric we started with had already been cut, so the only thing was for me to take them home and work away at it, which means it get set aside, but took up lots of space.

91 pads ready to pass on for pins & shipping.to Days for Girls

My recent plan was to make that be my priority project as soon as I got the sewing room cleaned up after Christmas.  The girls were gone for the afternoon after Christmas so I had completely uninterrupted sewing time - and no pressure for dinner since there are plenty of leftovers. I got the last 51 pads finished.  As a bonus I actually got a system going where I could piece the carnival quilt blocks in between pads.

Carnival Quilt Center

This week I also got the backing for the Red White & Blue quilt done at last.  I had almost all of the strips ready, but needed a large enough place to lay them out to decide on the placement and then cut the last two and sew them up.  This week I am not teaching, but I am tutoring so I took the pieces and used my classroom to lay it all out.  We have a sewing machine in the class so I just sewed them up as well.  HUGE RELIEF that this step is finished.

Red White & Blue Backing ready to sew

I have been trying and trying to figure out why the thread is breaking so much when I use my Brother machine on the frame for quilting.  I had narrowed it down to the darning foot and had gotten a replacement.  It didn't really make sense, but the foot had more then a few issues that had already been "fixed" so that I could still use it, so getting a new one was overdue anyways.  Sure enough when I reloaded the finicky quilt and tried again this week I had the same problem.  I now think it is the sheet as a backing that is causing the problem.  So I loaded this little one as a test on that theory.  After a not-so-smooth start I got in the groove and got it finished up in no time with no more thread breakage.

Test Quilt

CLEAN WORK SPACE 
+ DETERMINATION 
+ GIRLS GONE 
- WORK 
- DINNER 
= DONE DONE DONE

Linking up to Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Crazy Mom Quilts to show off finishes.