Sunday Morning Bliss

My week has been filled with a lot of activity, some good, some not so good.
As you may know from previous posts, I kinda came to quilting during a very difficult time in my life. I hadn't been feeling well for a long time and no one could figure out why, and quilting was a great distraction to keep me out of my own head. (it's become far more than that now...but it still is a good distraction when I'm having a hard week...this was a hard week)
My story in a nut shell....When I finally went outside of the normal health care options I found that I had some major food intolerances, wheat/gluten, dairy, eggs...just most of the major ones, outside of nuts. It has not been easy, especially the first weeks removing what had been the staple of my diet from my diet....seriously I practically lived on egg McMuffins... and don't even get me started on the nightmare that is package labelling, and figuring out all the sub-names for wheat and gluten., dairy... I have a huge new appreciation for anyone who has major food allergies that are life threatening....
I jokingly tell friends that I am still at the whining stage, which is only half a joke. It is so hard to let go of old family favourite recipes, and food that is so yummy, even when you know it will make you sick to eat it. It is even harder to find replacement foods for the family favourites. I feel like I have already wasted so much money on items I have purchased and items I have tried to bake that only end up in the garbage, but I have decide to stop my "whining" and  seriously open some of the cookbooks I have started to purchase and find some new favourites.  Even if the means a lot of it will may end up  in the trash.
So with that as my goal I set up a new blog called, UpStairsHobbyRoom Goes Vegan-ish. Cheeky I know, but basically with my food intolerances I eat like a vegan... but I still eat meat, especially bacon!!! There are no posts yet(first post is up),  but as I try out recipes and hopefully find some good ones I will post my reviews and create links, so that the information is journaled for me, and you... if you'd like to follow along. If you are in the same boat as me or know someone who is, please I'd love to hear from you.....links, recipes you've tried and loved, etc!!

For now let's get back to the real show....

What Happened in the HobbyRoom this Week:

The List:

1. Finish last 4 Around the Block blocks for my nephew's quilt
2. Test some of the blocks from Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts new pattern Forest Friends! Its a good one too!!
3. Set up the Link Up party for Oct 30-Nov 5 for the October block of One Block Wonders.
4. Start on the December Block tutorial and sample.

The Bliss:

I won 20 gorgeous wooden labels from All This Wood and attached the first one to my mini Sew Together Bag!!

I tested Kristy's new Feather pattern, Coming the beginning of November 

over on her blog Quiet Play. I even blogged about it here, with some sewing tips.

Completed more rows on my Knit Sampler Afghan

And took my son-in-law's business logo and created an oversized coaster (8") for his desk and part of his birthday gift. (FYI: don't forget to mirror your pattern when the direct matters! This is actually backwards, but being a W it was at least salvageable! I will owe him a proper one...maybe for Christmas, lol)

The Feather Test

Not to worry, no tickling involved in this test, ;) But I did get the opportunity to test a new paper pieced pattern by Kristy at Quiet Play. I love testing her patterns, and I've tested a few....

Winterbound 

 and lately the Geometric Series....these are fantastic....so many options

And the Feather Test and Review

Release of the pattern is set for beginning of November

This one has a lot of seams, and sewing the quill in the centre was definitely the trickiest part, but totally doable. Take your time press and use lots of pins on the second joining seam. (pictures below)

Also just watch the length of your pieces and the angles. I don't know about you but I always have more trouble with one angle flip then the other, so I lay the piece on  that I am checking and flip it over, mimicking a 1/4" seam to see if my fabric piece is long enough, and placement is right, to cover the angled area needed. If you aren't sure about where the placement is for the reverse side, I hold my piece of fabric with 2 fingers on each end, one finger on the fabric side and one finger on the back where the pattern is printed to make sure it extends passed the sewing line enough on each side.

Another thing to watch as you are joining the last section, the bottom background seam, I was so intent on matching top and bottom an sewing in the quill section straight that I forgot about that seam. You'll want to pin there. (red feather was pinned the other two....before I realized...they are both a little off)

The Feather is a very versatile pattern too, you don't have to sew on every sew line if you don't want, and because of the design it actually could be used as a leaf pattern too. It looks great with solids and prints, and a fantastic way to use up some of your scrap bits, so far that is all I've used.

The pattern sections are coloured in such a way to make it easy to use an assortment of colours/fabrics or to add your background colour in every other piece for a more open looking design.

My Tips

I found if you iron press to set the bulky seam and flip it back towards you

and press, it puts the seam allowance out of the way for joining the next section.

But just to be sure, I pin the 3 areas I want to have  line up, catching just some of the seam allowance area and making sure the end of the pin comes up and is over top of the seam allowance of the other seam. The pin holds the seam out of the way.

 I then add more pins to keep everything aligned as I sewed the last seam.

I also found that if you sewed the seam with the feather side up and the seam side down, it went a lot smoother.

 That's it! I hope you will all drop over to Kristy's blog and check out all her fantastic paper pieced patterns and try this one too when she adds it beginning of November!!

Oops...one more thing..... I added an extra piece to my yellow feather centre, to have feather at the top. Easy, peasy, just draw an extra angled line, and add some of your feather fabric!!

With them all lined up you can see they all are a bit different from each other. The yellow I omitted adding any background between colours and skipped those sewing line, giving me larger yellow section. The orange I believe I sewed every line with the background added. The red was a combination, added background, missed some lines and some background pieces. (I also made a fabric mistake that I fixed by adding an extra section that is not in the pattern. How do I make that work? I'll make that same "mistake" a few times, then only you and I will know it wasn't done on purpose!! ;)

This is going to make an amazing table runner!!

But for now back to my One Block Wonder prep!!