When we moved into the new house I decided to retire my old dressing gown. It was tending to be used as a lap blanket mostly anyway. It was Stumpy's favourite.
Rather than just throw it away I cut it up and made a little blanket for Stumpy. My main motivation was him sleeping on my ironing board. I needed to make him a nice place behind my machine.
I cut the biggest rectangle I could get from the front then squared the corners. I cut 2 x 3" strips from some cat fabric. I measured the long side and cut two border strips to size and stitched them on. I then measured for the second two border strips. Such a simple thing, but I had to learn that making the opposite border strips the same length kept my quilt square.
The cat fabric had the cutest selvedge.
I used my trusty 505 basting spray. A few squirts along the borders and a few waves across the middle and press it neatly into place on the backing. I didn't use any wadding. I just cut a second piece of the dressing gown for the backing. No fancy FMQ for the cat. I stitched in the ditch of the borders.
I also stitched around the edges after trimming the backing. I made some single fold binding with my binding machine. So quick and neat. I don't roll it up. I just feed it through by hand and let it fall off the edge of the table as it comes out.
It fits behind my sewing machine. Well, close enough anyway. Now all I have to do is get Stumpy to use it instead of sleeping on the ironing board.
DH and I also worked on some Glassapplique business. We have found a lovely couple who visit all the weekend markets and they love our dichroic glass jewellery. We hope to have a healthy wholesale business with them. Here are some of the pendant sets we made. They are not fine art but they are great at the markets. I will get back to playing with the glass soon.
Happy Quilting and Crafting,
Val
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