Squares Matched & Border Added

I'm still working on my Winter/Christmas Red Work Table Runner.

Let me tell you it's not easy to sew squares together so all corners match perfectly!

Some squares I fussed with sewing and ripping out several times. 

Until finally I said "That's enough...  

I can live with this". 

Next I added a two and 1/2 inch border in the same fabric as the other side of the table runner.  

Yesterday I cut out the backing and lightly sprayed adhesive to the polyester batting and backing. 

I decided to go to my sewing store today and buy the new Janome 12000 "stitch in the ditch" specialty foot advertised recently on the Janome website.

(Sorry!  If you are not a sewer you probably aren't interested in these details.) 

Hopefully that will help keep my quilt lines straight when top stitching my quilt layers together.  

I drove over to my Janome sewing store this morning and decided to buy some cotton batting in addition to the new Janome "stitch in the ditch" foot. 

I read that polyester batting can melt at high temperatures.  Since I plan to iron this runner on a cotton setting (with steam) it seemed that a cotton batting is a better choice.

I also purchased the "stitch in the ditch" S foot.

When I returned home I realized that I wanted to buy the

  AcuFeed (duel feed) "stitch in the ditch" SD foot.

That foot works better with layers of quilting than the regular "stitch in the ditch" S foot.

So after lunch I returned to the Janome sewing store and purchased the "stitch in the ditch" SD foot.

I decided to keep the "stitch in the ditch" S foot as I think it can be used with all decorative stitches.

I'm still learning about this quilting/embroidery machine.

And many of these functions are new to me...like this "AcuFeed" function (lots of videos here).

And I've never had a specialty foot for "stitching in the ditch" either.    

Now I have to replace the polyester batting with the cotton batting and then I will be ready to start actually quilting the top of the runner.

Did I ever mention that I am a slow crocheter...well, I'm also a slow sewer.

This project could go on forever.

I hope I'm not boring you.

At this rate, I doubt I will ever sew a bed size quilt!

LOL !

Summer is...

Red Work Embroidery!

Well, it's not perfect!

But I warned you it would be a challenge for me to add the "summer sayings" to my clothesline design. 

The clothesline design and alphabet lettering came already programmed in my Janome machine.

(There probably is embroidery computer software out there that would let me put this together in one design to stitch out.  But that's another story because of the issues using a PC versus a MAC computer.)  

The top part, "Summer is..."

 I added using my machine's embroidery monogram alphabet in "block". 

It's 3.9 inches long by .8 inches tall. 

I used my 4 by 4 embroidery hoop.  

That turned out pretty good. 

The IKEA Ribba frames I bought in the wrong size for some prints I had turned out to be ideal for framing the red work embroidery design.  

For the bottom "summer sayings" I switched to my machine's ordinary sewing decorative stitches.  Again using my machine's "block" alphabet.   First I marked what I thought hoped were parallel stitch lines.  No embroidery hoop used here just straight stitching across.  I picked a few "summer" sayings I liked.   

I programmed the first line which went ok until the end when I realized I forgot to program the line to stop and it started to repeat the line again.  It repeated the first letter of the first word in the line...the "s" before I manually stopped it.  So I thought I would program it to continue with "unshine" so it spelled "sunshine" at the end of the first line.  

Of course, it didn't go quite right.  I placed the last part of the word too far to the right so there was too big of a space between the "s" and the "unshine".  So, I added another "s" between the first "s" and the "unshine" and tried to pick out the first "s".  

The end result is the "s" is a little messy because it's almost impossible to pick the stitches out.   

Are you dizzy yet with all the "s"s?

I am!  

Of course, I can't make just one goof!

Second mistake.. I added a second comma at the end of the last word in the last line because I forgot I already had one inserted.

Sorry for the low light and fuzzy photo here.

At that point I decided to leave it alone because I would never be able to pick out the second comma.   

It's easier to tell myself that it makes the stitchery more real homemade with the mistakes and not store-bought this way.

Yeah...ha!

I'll be sewing more of these and I can always replace this design (thank goodness).  

~~~~~~~~~~

Funny cartoon of the day:

Source:  Pinterest