Variety of Non-quilting Projects Completed

     I pulled out the embroidery module for my Bernina 185 and completed 2 projects. I had bought my mother a plain white knit top so I decorated it with a lacy white on white design. It makes the top much fancier.

She had bought herself a plain white sweatshirt jacket and asked me to embroider a bird on it.  I had let her look over my selection of bird designs and we decided on a hummingbird.  Now she is set.

I happened upon this fancy pink knit fabric at Hobby Lobby and thought it would make great skirt for my granddaughter.  Recently at Hamricks I saw a ladies top made out of the same material.

The skirt is cute so I hope it fits.

The fabric is a thin silky knit and it was a little difficult to sew.   I used my serger for the back seam.  I wanted to use the serger for the waistband but wanted to have it be a casing for elastic so I sewed it on my regular machine with the aid of Dritz Wash Away Wonder Tape. That is one notion I have seen Nancy Zieman use on her show and I bought some when it was half price.  It came in very handy today.   One side of the tape sticks to one piece of fabric.You peel off the papertape and stick two pieces of fabric together in place, then sew. 

 

      I also took a few minutes to play with a fat quarter of Jinny Beyer’s “Rose Garden” fabric. It is very old.  Jinny specializes in designing border type fabrics with symmetrical designs.  With only a fat quarter I was able to cut 4 SMALL repeats and stack them. Because of my small piece and the way the line of symmetry fell, the outer edges of these blocks are bias.  I was thinking of adding triangles to make them a square in a square but that would put bias edges together so I may have to frame them with straight pieces first.  The little rectangle on the right shows you a little of the fabric design before being cut up. 

I don’t have a plan for these blocks.  I just wanted to play with the symmetry of the fabric.  On Jinny’s website http://www.jinnybeyer.com/quilting-with-jinny/design-board/browse.cfm    there are lots of free block patterns, many of which use symmetry to make interesting blocks.