One Potato, Two Potatoes

Yep, I know. I posted the little wallet before. I promised it to a friend and couldn't find it when I went looking. So I did it again. Some days you feel soooo old.

My niece is turning 20 and she's :). She has so much to learn about this aging. If only she knew what I do now, and I didn't. Would that make us even?

Today I made a potato bag. I used cotton thread, pure cotton batting and cotton cloth. You pop in a potato or two and pop it into the microwave. Don't you love the potato prints? It was an opportunity to practice my free motion quilting. I outlined the potatoes. I'm enjoying this. I've signed up for two classes online with Leah Day and she is an excellent teacher. My Pfaff likes to have its feed dogs raised when quilting. Leah mentions that some machines make a better stitch this way, and that it's worth a look. I agree. They don't interfere at all, and my bobbin thread behaved more smoothly. I did set stitch length to 0.

Also learned that it you go too fast with your hands you will bend your needle and it will tick the sides of your bobbin and then all hell breaks loose. Patience, baby! I tried a slippery piece of silicone on my machine. It makes the fabric slide more easily. I think it's a keeper.

I also played more with embroidery. I made two pillowcases for Valentine's Day. I like colourful pillowcases! They add a note of whimsy to the boudoir. I also decided to embroider both the front and the back of the pillowcase border. Really, why not? It gives you more options. I did really miss the boat on one thing, though. I should have embroidered a love note with my glow-in-the-dark thread. Wouldn't that have been 'da bomb'? Note the vintage crochet/rickrack trim. I'm starting to dig into my rather embarrassingly large stash. You don't want to have your stash outlive you!

Today I learned (one more time!) that proper stabilizer is important. I thought I'd cheat with a patch taped to the previous hole from the previous embroidery. Shameless! It wasn't at all stabilized and it puckered. I kept it in the pillow band as it wasn't too bad, and it was a good reminder to not ask more than the stabilizer and machine can do. It's the 'I () you'. If I had used the tacky stabilizer and patched that, I think it should have been fine, but I do like to push that too far as well. I am so cheap! And this embroidery is a black hole you throw money into.  I need to build up thread colours!