Sew I See!

Making progress on the "Use It Up" quilt (a.k.a. the crumbs and words quilt)!   This week I've pieced a backing for the quilt.  Originally, I was just going to use a single large piece (or two) of flannel for the backing, but as I dug through the stash, I found that I'd marked some of the remnants with notes to indicate that they'd been pre-washed.  That reminded me that I've been prewashing the flannel before using it as backing.   I don't usually bother with pre-washing, but since (as I understand it) flannel can shrink more significantly and differently than quilting cotton, it seemed like a good idea to prewash in this case.  I was itching to get something done and didn't want to deal with the delay of prewashing, so I thought I'd follow the mantra of the quilt and use up those scrap strips and pieces of pre-washed flannel.  It's good to get those scraps out of the stash, but piecing it all together was definitely not a time-saving decision

No, still not finished, but making progress.  Every bit counts!   This isn't quite where I left it: But it's close!   Let's back up a bit... Last time, I'd just finished putting the top and bottom padding/margins on the individual words.  After that, I put in the spacers between the words.  (I think it was something like 3" strips, finishing at 2.5" spaces, but I don't remember and don't have it beside me to check.) Then I added in the random dots of blue before or after the words on each line of text.  And at that point, it was time to remind myself of how many crumb strips I had, how tall each was (they're in three different heights), etc.  I decided on a layout by... laying them out.  😁  I used the floor-- the only surface in the room large enough.  (Pinning these strips to the design wall would've been messy and just not worth the effort, in my opinion.)   Now I've begun sewing the strips together.  I'm stopping as I go to trim thi

Trying to stay "in the groove" with this craft blog!  The key does seem to be posting regularly, even if there's nothing momentous to report.   You may have noticed the font size on this blog changed recently.  I've been increasing it, because when I checked how it looks on the tablet (and maybe the phone, can't recall), it seemed too small for comfortable reading.  I hope this will make it a bit better.  - - - - - - - I didn't do a whole lot of crafting this long holiday weekend, but I did some.  There are now a couple more string blocks for the HST project and another inch or two on the current diamond painting.   What I'm more excited about, however, is that I finally resumed work on the freestyle words that have been sitting on the design wall for ever a long, long time.  As always in these cases, once I started working on it, it went fairly quickly and I enjoyed it.  (Why does this happen so often?)  I didn't spend that long with it, however, an