Design Wall Monday, Brought to You by Anders!

Anders with his Completed Blocks on the Design Wall

Happy Monday!  It was Lars's turn to paint with Grammy and Anders' turn to spend time in the sewing room with Mom yesterday afternoon.  He completed his 16 Roman Square blocks and I only made him resew one seam.  Now we are having negotiations about what comes next, because originally these were supposed to be "practice" blocks before he started in on the good fabrics he selected for his sampler quilt.  Now he is saying that these cheetah-print blocks are going to be a blanket for snuggling.  I explained that, once he has seamed them together, these 16 blocks (4 1/2" square finished) are only going to be 18" x 18" and that's an awfully small quilt for snuggling unless you are a doll...  And no, it's NOT for anyone's doll -- banish that thought!  I don't have any more of either of these two fabrics, so if he wants this to be a little lap blanket we will need a plan that involves additional coordinating fabric.

Anders Chain Piecing Roman Squares on His Featherweight

The vintage seam guide for his 1951 Singer Featherweight is working very well for him, as you can see.  I used 1/4" graph paper to position the guide on the machine bed before tightening the screw to secure it in place.  I like this adjustable guide so much better than the patchwork feet with an attached guide, because sometimes you need to take that seam allowance a hair larger or smaller in order for your pieced units to finish at the correct size, and there is no way to adjust those guides that are permanently attached to the right toe of the presser foot.  The patchwork feet that come with a sliding adjustable guide bar tend to loosen and move from the machine's vibration during sewing, so those aren't my favorites, either.  With this vintage Singer attachment, you can tighten it down so it's not going ANYWHERE.  Anders is learning to watch that his fabric edge is right up next to the "wall," not looking at his needle, and he's getting very good results this way.

Ta Da!

The other stuff up on the wall is mine -- the Jingle BOM pieced and appliqued blocks, for instance.  No, I haven't finished any other blocks in the past week, but I've been working on fabric selections for the remaining four pieced blocks and I chain stitched the stems on the last two applique blocks.  I've been prepping pieces for the center applique medallion as well, although there are still LOTS of them left to do.  The smaller blocks on Anders' right are my "oops" blocks, slated for FMQ practice, and the paper pieced star on the top right is going to be the center of an Advent table runner, eventually.  I'm linking up to Design Wall Monday over at Patchwork Times -- click on over to see what other quilters are working on this week.

Meanwhile, I have two more free-motion quilting exercises to complete and post about in the next 10 days in order to complete the 2012 Free-Motion Quilting Second Chance Challenge by the October 31st deadline, and I signed on for another machine embroidery blog hop hosted by SewCalGal for the first week in November.  I'm scheduled to post on Wednesday, November 6th, and I have some VERY unique designs to show you.  We will all be featuring machine embroidered projects from a talented professional digitizer, sharing best practices for machine embroidery, and I believe we will each be hosting a fabulous GIVEAWAY, so be sure to check back November 4th through the 8th!  Here's the official schedule and lineup of machine embroidery bloggers for that event:

Monday, November 4th

• SewCalGal – www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com

Tuesday, November 5th:

• I Have A Notion  - http://www.ihaveanotion.blogspot.com/

 

Wednesday, November 6th:

• ME! ME! ME! -  Cheeky Cognoscenti   - http://www.cheekycognoscenti.blogspot.com/
• Patsy Thompson Designs - http://www.patsythompsondesigns.com/blog/

Thursday, November 7th:

• Beaquilter - http://www.beaquilter.com/

Friday, November 8th:

• Stormy Days - http://stormy-daysblog.blogspot.com/
• SewCalGal – www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com

Can you believe it's almost Halloween already?!  Yikes!!  I'm a room parent again this year, which means I need to help coordinate classroom parties in addition to the usual rustling up of pumpkins, costumes, and candy.  I had better get busy!

Enjoy this beautiful Fall weather and have a fantastic day.