Civil War Projects

 I've been having fun this week with these small projects. This is another one of the blocks from the Orphans and Scraps project. I should have auditioned my fabrics a little better than I did, but it IS all a learning process, isn't it? This is actually another 4.5-inch block and each of those 4-patches is only 1.5 inches finished! She gives a cool little tutorial on how to make these without having to deal with teeny, tiny pieces of fabric.

That being said, you're STILL playing with small pieces (around 1.5 inches) and it's like making Barbie doll quilts! I was never particularly fond of making Barbie clothes because they were so challenging to make, especially with all those tiny sleeves. Now I know why Barbie usually wore strapless gowns!

This was today's block and even though it was easier than the other ones to make, I should have paid more attention to which way the seam allowances were going. I'm not going to show the back, since there are too many twisted seams to reveal!

Here are the three blocks I've finished so far, and if you can see the tape measure, you can tell just how tiny they are. I'm hoping to finish the last block tomorrow and it will be a paper-pieced one, so we'll see how that goes!

Laura is always ready and willing to "help" in the quilt studio, so I've been giving her some Dresden "petals" that I had sewn as a leader/ender project and had her press them for me. Once I showed her what I wanted, she did a pretty good job. The biggest challenge for her (and one she didn't recognize as doing wrong) was getting the seam centered. So when the time comes that I'm actually going to sew these together, I'll have to go back and make sure all the seams are pressed to center.

In the spirit of Civil War projects, I finally quilted this little doll quilt I made. It's only 17.5"x22.5". In this picture, it really doesn't look any different than it did before, since I haven't added the binding. But if you look at it closely...

Before I mention the quilting, I need to say something about the Frixion Erasable pens. I've used them before--you draw your lines and then to remove them you simply iron over them. I haven't used them a lot, but when I did they seemed to work great. At least, until this project. If you notice those sort of light-colored lines that I drew--those were where I used the Frixion pens and then ironed to remove them. I don't know if I did something wrong or what, but just a warning to be careful in using these pens. Test them on anything you care about BEFORE you use them!

Now for the quilting--I used a wavy stitch that's one of the built-in stitches on my Bernina 1130. I saw someone use this stitch for quilting in a blog post (I don't remember where, or I'd give them credit) and I've been wanting to try it. It's WONDERFUL--quick, easy and even fun! I LOVE how it looks, especially on the back where you can really see the stitching. Doesn't that just look COOL?!

Now another day of Getting More Done comes to a close, so I'll just Get More Done...Tomorrow!

I'm linking to Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?