Friday 13 July 2012

Keeping It Real

I had hoped to have a great finish for today. A nice quilty finish. A Peacocks in the Garden finish. But, it didn’t happen. What did happen was life. Sick kids, sick me and some seriously bad sewjo. However I did make a couple more little umbrellas though so I at least have a few pretty pictures for my blog post.
Brolly line up
Ever have days when your sewing machine is clearly screaming out “Step away from the machine, we are not friends right now!”? No? Just me? Well yesterday was one of those days for me.
Aqua Brolly
This sweet little aqua umbrella is deceiving. It’s the reason for me finally listening to my machine, throwing my fabric down in disgust (tempted to throw the seam ripper but the way my night was going, it’d probably ricochet and take out an eye) and leaving the sewing for another day. I thought I had sewn the wrong fabrics in the wrong places on the points i.e. they didn’t match. Disappointment x 2. Frustration x gazillion billion.
But when I went back to it today, apparently the fabrics rearranged themselves during the night and were in the correct places. And this aqua brolly sewed together with the least number of seams unpicked so far.
Orange brolly
Orange however – I thought we were becoming friends, really I did. Til it pulled its uneven block stunt. You’re back on my lukewarm list, orange, bear that in mind. That’s right – those are uneven seams. But know what? I’m not unpicking them again. They can stay uneven. That’ll remind me not to trust orange again any time soon.
Oh and one final bad sewing misadventure… the attempt at quilting Peacocks in the Garden. Perfectionists, quilt police, real quilters, avert your eyes.
Puckering hell
Oh yeah that’s one ginormous pucker right there. And on every other damn intersection. So guess what? I have a whollle lot of unpicking to do. Peacocks in the Garden is right back on that WiP list. Damnit. I really wanted to move it to the Finished list too.
Ah well. At least I have a twirl of umbrellas, a bevy of brollies,  a shower of umbrellas, or a cloud of umbrellas (or in my present sewing mood, a storm of umbrellas!) to cheer me up. They do look cute all together, don’t they?
Umbrellas lined up

12 comments:

  1. You are doing some seriously tricky stuff with paper piecing. I'm amazed how well it works so much of the time! Good on you for taking photos of the not-so-perfect days.
    /passes the lemon juice-honey-hot water drink of getting-better

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  2. Oh dear, sounds like you need a break! Sounds like your sewing machine does too. Can you overdose on paper piecing do you think?

    Mind you, your bevy of brollies are looking lovely, even if Miss Orange is playing hard to get (even).

    Hope you are all feeling better soon.

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  3. Get well soon and thanks for sharing!

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  4. Yep - have totally those days. And, yes, they look so cute together.

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  5. Oh, I can sympathise! I had one of those weeks. I had such plans to finish a bag and get started quilting a quilt that's all basted and ready to go. Instead a whole lot of life happened and I decided I was my most important WIP for the week!

    Your umbrellas are cute, in spite of the trouble they caused you :)

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  6. I also did a lot of unpicking today. I wanted to try several new things at once, but should have stuck to trying one thing at a time and not combining them. Luckily my son was generous and was willing to play on the floor a bit more than normal. And now I'm back to where I started the day.

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  7. Thanks for sharing your frustrations. Not that I am glad that you were frustrated, I am just glad to know that I am not the only one who has bad sewing days like that.

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  8. Orange just can't be trusted. Glad you learned your lesson ;-)

    And I hope you are getting your sewjo (love this term) back.

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  9. That is a beautiful bevy of brollies indeed. I really like the orange one. Hope you and your sewing machine have made up and are friends again.

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  10. I love orange wish I had more in my stash.
    Great looking brollies there! So cute! Where do you get all the patterns? =D

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  11. Ooooh a new word for my vocab list - sewjo haha! I frequently lose mine and if I have to get my unpicker out all kind of bad sewjo starts to happen. This is usually solved by a glass of wine or two!!

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  12. Another post that made me chuckle. Although I must step in in defence of poor Miss Orange - she is only trying to look cheery through the storm, and in the line up of all 5, she stands out the most.

    As to the puckering - lining up horizontal and vertical lines can be tricky. Are the feed dogs moving the back of the quilt through faster than the top? Could the heaviness of the quilt weight be dragging on the lining up of the quilt sandwich? Is it thicker batting than usual?

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