February Goal

I am dedicating my studio time this month to finishing up Country Haven, a Kim Diehl design (pattern found in the book Simple Appeal) that I'm working up in Andover's new Little House on the Prairie fabric line.

The log cabin-style center section and the strippy border cornerstones are all sewn together.  Next thing to tackle is the applique border.  All of the applique shapes (vines, leaves, and berries) are all prepped and ready to be sewn on now.  I've been playing around with tensions for using nylon threads to machine applique, but I'm having a lot of difficulty.  The clear YLI thread is working pretty well so far, but it wasn't available in smoke at my LQS so I picked up a spool of Mettler nylon --- ugh --- I cannot get my poor machine to stop eating the Mettler!!!  grr.....

If you have any suggestions for dealing with nylon thread for invisible applique, I'm all ears!  I'm using a thin-ish needle (70/10) with a zigzag stitch length & width set at 1.0.  My tension for YLI is best set at 2.5 (normal 40wt. cotton is 3.0).

Q1 (Jan-Mar 2016) Finish Along Goals:

1. Crumb Along (Jo's Country Junction)
2. Strippy Spools (M*QC)
3. 4-Patch Revisited (Bonnie Hunter)
4. Spools (Bonnie Hunter)
5. Purple Flowers
6. Lunch Box Social (Kim Diehl)
7. Country Haven (Kim Diehl)
8. Buttermilk Basin BOM 2015
9. That 70s Quilt Re-Do
10. Rustic Stars (Wounded Warrior Quilt)

For fun stuff happening today in the blog-o-sphere, check out the link-ups on my sidebar!