And it relates to a very important discovery I made Wednesday morning.
In a box marked "batting", I found nearly 25 yards of flannel prints. Yes I have a problem. I realize this, but that isn't the point. The point is, rather than having to buy flannel to make receiving blankets for the 13 people I know that are pregnant (I realized I forgot another friend! Gah!), I can just go "shopping" in my stash!
Hello happy wallet, eh?! :)
Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, I guess, most of it is definitely girlie. In general, I think that cute flannel for boys is just hard to find anyways, and also, I've got two little girls, and most of my friends were having girls, so my eyes went to the girlie flannel. Good then, not necessarily bad now, because of my 13 friends that are pregnant, half are having girls, so I'm good. I think I may still need to buy some boy flannel, but I know I'm saving money right now.
Which is nice.
Anyway. After that discovery, I chose a few prints and washed them. I always prewash flannel. I don't always prewash my quilting cotton. Flannel shrinks. Not good. Prewash. Good.
Now, as hard as I try to prevent it, there are inevitably wrinkles in the flannel. And those wrinkles run deep, you know? I kind of hate to have to iron out the wrinkles in flannel, but it seems like something I just can't avoid. :-/
Back to Line 1 -- I discovered something yesterday.
My (granite) kitchen island is PERFECT for ironing flannel. PERFECT!!!
It's just the right height, it is muuuuuch wider than my ironing board, I don't have to worry about the flannel sticking to the board, I don't have to worry about stray threads from other fabric sticking to the flannel, I get to be near my children when they don't want to play upstairs near my ironing board...the list goes on and on.
I ironed the piece on the left, and you can see how different it is compared to the piece on the right, that I didn't iron, yet. It's not, you know, scientific, or anything, but to me, it's a pretty significant difference. Especially since some of my cuts of flannel are 2 yards. Ironing 2 yards of sticky flannel on an ironing board is aaaaggggoooonnnnyyy. Ironing 2 yards of flannel on my island is eeeeaaaassssyyyy. Zip, zip, zip.
Now, if only I could find a cutting mat that fit the island exactly...THAT would be a dream come true. :)
In other news, I finished my bee blocks for Janice (for the Bee Happy bee). She sent us Denyse Schmidt's Hope Valley and asked us to make on block with triangles, no wonky allowed, and one block with a set-in circle, where the innards of the circle could be any design we wanted.
I looked and looked at block designs with triangles, and kept coming back to the simple ones. I saw what someone called a friendship block, so I went with it, modifying it a bit. And for the inside of the circle, I decided to go with a loosely inspired version of Denyse Schmidt's Pie In The Sky pattern. The setting-in was challenging, and I was really sure it would come out all warped and gross and, well, just wrong.
But it turned out with very microscopic warps, and Janice is pleased with both, so that's a win.
OH...and in other, exciting news...I get to pick up my serger today!! They figured out how to make the knocking stop, and get the rocking started! I'm so excited. I'm not sure, yet, what the problem was, but I've prepped a bit so, hopefully I can crank out some things tonight and tomorrow.
THAT would make me happy as this has been a low-sew week.
LOL! You are hilarious! You sound like me when I was moving...I just kept finding fabric, everywhere! Your bee blocks are fab, the circle one is amazing!
ReplyDeleteYay for saving money on the flannel, and for fab new discoveries :o)
ReplyDeleteLove the blocks, and Woohoo on the serger!
I am so glad you found that box! The countertop seems like a perfect place to iron to me, and it is so helpful when you can do things in the room where everyone else is. Your blocks are great-love the circle one especially! I can't wait to see what you start serging; that opens up a whole new area of sewing.:)
ReplyDeleteYou can cut those cutting mats to fit anything you want. You can use every bit of it also. You will end up with little ones that you can use by your sewing machine, take to sew ins,etc. So many uses. I cut mine with a saw. I found that I would end up with areas of some of my big ones worn out because I tend to cut on the same area all the time. Well did not want to throw it out when there really was a big area unused so I started cutting them. That is how I found that it worked.
ReplyDeleteI know I'm a little bit late reading this, but my daughter's been keeping us busy! Thanks for the tip of ironing flannel on the granite counter top. I never considered it as an option and you're right. It's brilliant!
ReplyDelete