Friday update

I realized with surprise it’s mid-afternoon already, which means I have been hard at work for over 6 hours. Furlough Fridays are for crafting, but it really is time for a break. Here is what I have been up to today:

In the background is the navy skirt with its coral lining, still in progress. I have the front, back, and side seams sewn and all 8 properly finished (so much hand felling!), and the zipper is in, although I see it’s crooked at the top 1.5″ on one side, so I have to unpick and re-stitch that bit. Next is pockets and waistband. And a big hem…

After taking a knitting break for the entire month of January (??), I made a little hat the last few nights. Actually, it’s one I made in December, but I didn’t like how floppy it got after a wash, so this week I unraveled and re-knitted it with needles 2 sizes smaller. This left enough yarn at the end to make an i-cord at the top, and, just for fun, I tried a 2-color striped i-cord. The fabric feels good after a wash, so I’ll weave in the ends when it dries.

I spent most of the day on Fancy Fox practice. Recent fabric shopping went well. I got green batik and off-white, which I cut up this morning, along with an old shirt of mine, into piles of different-sized pieces, then got to assembling. The first two blocks I pieced are in the unpicking pile because they’re lined up about as poorly as the practice block was. I learned the reason: my sewing machine’s presser foot’s edge is a little more than 1/4″ from the needle and that makes a big difference when a section is 5 pieces across! For the two blocks in the photo, I ran the fabric along the edge of the feed dog slot instead and got nearly perfect 1/4″ seams. I’m not aiming for precision blocks that look as though they were made by a robot, but I need them close enough to the right size so I can actually make a quilt top with them.

Where else did the day go? I spent time on triangle research. You can absolutely piece triangles but they’re fiddly. While I’m a beginner still trying to get pieces lined up properly, I will stick with squares cut on the diagonal line after stitching. I carefully unpicked the shirt before cutting, taking notes on shirt construction as I went. And after a lovely fabric-and-thread snarl around mid-day the sewing machine’s timing got thrown out of whack again, so I spent a while with a screwdriver and reading glasses, cautiously adjusting until things were working again.

It feels like two fox blocks isn’t a lot to show after a good crafting session, but all I learned — more efficient cutting, lining up that 1/4″, chain piecing, drawing the diagonal line in pencil on all to-be-triangles pieces in one go, sewing machine repair — means the rest will be easier. I also made design choices while tinkering. The shirts I’m cutting up are striped. I want the fox forehead to have a horizontal stripe and the rest to be vertical stripes, so I have to be a little fussy about cutting, but I am not going to worry about matching ears or cheeks along the stripes. If I had a vertically-striped forehead piece, it would bother me when the ear and cheek stripes didn’t line up; this way, with that horizontal break, I’m fine with it.