Sew-tastic Week-end!

Around these parts, it's still technically the week-end (yes, I know this post is dated Monday). It's a civic holiday for lots of people in Nova Scotia. Long week-ends don't have quite the same oomph when you're on vacation, but I can appreciate them on others' behalf!

The past three days saw me sewing away as though they were my last days on earth. Would I sew if it was my last day? There's a good possibility of it!

On Friday afternoon, I decided to start a paper pieced project I bought on Craftsy called Crabby. Himself spends a lot of his worklife with these little darlings, so I'm drawn to fabric and patterns featuring crabs. This pattern had a lot of small pieces... the finished block is only 8½ by 11. If you decide to make it, be forewarned. The sections are lettered and numbered, with the numbers representing your piecing order. But there's no shading or coding to tell you whether the piece should be crab or background. Hence the numbers circled in blue on my pieces.

I intended this to be a project I could pick away at over time. Paperpiecing is perfect for that. (Q-A would disagree, heartily.) But once I got going, I just couldn't stop. He's all finished and ready to be quilted into something lovely... perhaps this week.

 Now for the fun bit... tearing off all that paper. Perfect for television time.

Then the urge to make some HSTs hit me again. They just came together so nicely on that baby quilt I made earlier in the week. I had these beautiful fabrics left over from a recent baby quilt. I added some of my favourite new tone on tone - Rain. It's the second from the bottom. I have it in three colours already and fear I will be unable to resist buying more.

I forgot to take pics of the blocks in process, but I used the same technique as my last HST adventure. This is how it looked when I went to bed... very late. Please note the use of the design floor ☺and that my pedicure matches the quilt.

Saturday saw my living room/dining room/kitchen taken over for another Quilt Therapy session with Q-Squared. Q-A and Q-D were in attendance and working away on their projects while I sewed together my HST... I'm calling it Citron Twist.

I love a striped binding! One of these days, I'm going to end up planning a quilt around a striped fabric for the binding.

On Sunday, I spent some time layering and quilting the asterisk tree skirt... here's a sneak peak. You'll see more another day!

Then there's today's project. This one's been layered and ready to go for a while, I just needed some fire in me to take on the quilting.

 

I was inspired by the front cover of Quilting Modern (soon to be added to my quilting library courtesy of Himself. I was leary of the pebbled free motion quilting, but Q-D urged me on. And away I went!

I paced this work by bobbins. As each bobbin ran out, I'd get up, take a pic, stretch, and do some little jobs around the house. I knew from the first few minutes of pebbling that this pattern was going to be rough on my neck and shoulders. Lots of breaks needed!
Bobbin 1

 Bobbin 2

 Bobbin 3

 Bobbin 4 - I am becoming less proficient in keeping my feet out of the shot!

 Bobbin 5 - Into the borders!

With only a few square inches left to quilt, catastrophe! When you buy 800m of thread, you just don't think it's ever going to run out.

But I found a solution. Lucky for me, the tension in my machine is excellent and didn't seem to mind a bobbin on the thread spool!

 The last section to pebble... roughly 4 hours later.

And here she is - all done! Mother Nature turned off the thundershowers for a few minutes and put out some blue sky and puffy clouds for me.

Like I said, there was a lot of sewing around these parts!

Hope your week-end was sew-tastic too!

J