productive progress

I've had a really productive couple of weeks.

Last week, 

I finished the hand quilting on my luscious stars and squares quilt

the very same day

that I finished the machine quilting on my commission project.

Then I added binding to both

by machine

and pressed

and

glue basted the binding to the back in preparation for hand sewing it down.

With that,

my commission work was done,

and I earned just enough to buy another sewing machine for Rahab's Rope.

YAY!!!

I immediately started on my One Block Wonder quilt,

which I cut out one day

when I just wanted to work on something different

than the black and white beauty that was occupying pretty much all of my sewing time

(so, technically, not a new project ;-)

I panicked because I'd cut my triangles with a blunt tip,

and worried for days that I'd wasted all that fabric.

But then Carol posted this,

so I asked her about it,

and she sweetly responded and told me I'd be just fine.

Whew!

These blocks are so much fun to make!

I set up my little ironing table right by my machine

and got into a good rhythm with the sewing and pressing

and really

never wanted to stop when it was time to.

Being my first OBW,

I didn't want to confuse myself with turning the triangles and deciding on the 'best' configuration,

so I just went with the blunted tip at center.

'scuse the extra crappy night-time phone pics

I got all 576 triangles sewn into 192 hexagon halves in 7 hours

over the course of 3 days,

then spent 3 hours sewing them into rows.

I've spent about a half hour pressing those,

and still have probably an hour to go.

Then I'll sew the rows together\and figure the rest out the quilt top from there.

Yesterday morning

I did the machine quilting on my stars and squares,

just a simple huge FMQ flower in each star block.

When I quilted my commission quilt,

I really had to fight with it to move it around,

not because of the size or weight,

but it just did.not.slide.

Every quilting session was such a workout.

I didn't want to fork over almost $50 for a Supreme Slider,

so I put on my thinking cap.

Well, 

actually,

 I just searched 'teflon' on Amazon to see what I might come up with.

I found some teflon pressing cloth things that might have worked,

but none of the reviews mentioned quilting.

Then I found teflon oven liners,

and a couple of the reviewers used them for FMQ.

so then I googled to see if I could find anyone else using oven liners for 

quilting slip and slides,

and lo and behold I found someone

(I forget who, sorry)

who had used a SS, but wore it out, and tried the liner 

and found it to be just as helpful.

I figured for $8.55 I'd give it a whirl.

People.

I can no longer consider my FMQ my workout.

I just cut out a little hole for my needle 

and cut a little curve for the side of my machine

and used a few pieces of masking tape to keep it in place

and I had myself a little ice-skating rink

for my quilt.

My arms are sore today,

but it's from an actual workout - with weights,

not fabric.

Linking up with Lee and the gals over at Freshly Pieced

p.s. I have less than 1/2 of the binding to sew down,

so I may very well have a  delicious quilty finish to share on Friday :-)