Surgical Face Mask Pattern

Surgical Face Mask Pattern

Border Challenge

I have been working on Manor House from Quiltmania mag.  After finishing the first two sections, I decided I needed to do the border so that the sections will be well balanced inside the border.  I have gone off script from the pattern for the third section so I decided I want to do the bottom section next and finish with the 3rd section.  I did the top border and then started down both the left and right sides.  After I got about halfway down, one side was 1/4 inch shorter than the other.  Panic struck.  I did not know the background fabric was not printed straight or if the dots were more irregular than I had thought or if the patches were not well cut or if the corners of the triangles were shredding off.  I changed my strategy and continued down the right side being careful to measure every fifteen inches so that the triangles were properly placed and sewn.  I measured and marked the bottom corners and did my best to square up the patches as I went across the bottom and the up the left side.  It went pretty smoothly.  I am putting it away for the time being.  I may not be able to be down stairs with my sewing machine while my mother recovers from her broken leg.  This will give me some handwork I can do in whatever space she resides for the next hunk of time.  I am disappointed that the green vine ( and the leaves too)  does/do not show up well.  I may have to do some embroidery to punch it up.  I will reassess after I finish the other applique and see the balance of values in the whole piece. 

I am sandwiching my train baby quilt with Quilters Select Free Fuse.  I have for many years pinned my quilts with safety pins.  After that I used Pin Moors and T pins.  Then I switched to fusible batting.  With Free Fuse I can choose any kind of batting.  It is my new favorite.  

I had some Laurel Birch fabric left over from a baby quilt and when I saw the train pattern in a recent Quiltmania publication, I decided to make another baby quilt.  Our neighbor just had a baby in November.  I pattern called for six inch square centers in the train cars but the animals on the fabric were much smaller so I resized the blocks.  The smaller blocks made to quilt very small so I drafted the industrial cars from some coloring book pages found on the internet.  I went to add the borders and pulled out a book to find an approximation of the amount of fabric needed for the binding and decided to made a pieced border instead of the solid border.  The arrow border is simple but it had bias edges so it was a bit of a problem.  I am using this carrot fabric that was from my Becky stash for the backing.  I have tried to use if a number of times and it did not quite work.  On to sandwiching and binding.