wip wednesday 2026.9

i got some sunday slow stitching done this past weekend and i finally came up with a pattern order for my stitching on "groovy liberty." i've been stitching the middle of each piece in the pinwheels of this block, but there was no good or obvious way to work around the block as the stitching is not connected from one piece to the next and the stop and start points on the ends aren't always close enough to each other to easily move between on a continuous thread. this slow stitching session, however, a feasible order of stitching occurred to me. if you look closely at the stitching done in the above photo you can see my plan of attack. i know it's so hard to see in the floral piece, but if you look closely/zoom in, you can see that the floral piece in the upper right corner has stitching across the middle horizontally.

the stitching starts in the bottom right corner on that dark chambray piece. i stitched a vertical straight line in the middle from the bottom near the lower sashing to the top, ending just before the floral piece. then i move my needle under the fabric to the far right side of the floral piece, poking the needle back through at the horizontal mid-point of the floral piece, next to the sashing on the right, and stitch across the middle of the floral piece towards the center of the block. it's kind of an inverted L shape or an off-center T shape, except the lines don't touch anywhere. i cut my thread length just long enough to do those two pieces, so i tie off after making that L/T. then I'll start over in the next chambray piece in the top right corner and turn 90 degrees down to do the adjacent floral piece to it's left. i can do this four times per block and just keep wrapping around 90 degrees each time. if i wanted to work with a longer thread length, i could easily move to that green "thorpe" piece in the upper left square and then move to the chambray in the upper right corner next before having to tie off. but i like the shorter length for now.

easy - peasy and it feels good to have a consistent plan.

d1 & R came to help out for their portion of d4's birthday quilt. so we got that top all put together into a flimsy now.

now that she's done with all the 16 patches for "pinky stinky" edna, d5 and i have been discussing her next quilt make. she's been wanting to make use of the fat quarter set heather ross gave her at quiltcon 2025. she wants to fussy cut the ponies and feature them in the quilt. she's been pouring over my books and wracking her brain for an idea.

 we spread out the beautiful courthouse steps quilt i got from jennifer (penelope handmade) to look at that pattern because it's simple and d5 likes it so much. we were pretty much decided on this one with 4" pony squares for the hearth pieces until she started seeing dumbbell shapes in the blocks. so there went that (easy) idea. she really wanted to make economy blocks but i was trying to find something with larger blocks and simpler piecing for her to tackle. plus, we couldn't get enough ponies out of the fat quarter if we cut them in diamond shapes. so no economy blocks this time.

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when i got jennifer's newsletter featuring her newest pattern, constance, i knew we'd found our pattern. it's going to be so cute and will help push d5's skills up a little with the introduction of hsts and flip-and-stitch flying geese. we're excited! she'll be doing a toddler size for her niece, little A.

i've been working on the quilting for "frosted forest star" here and there. i spent one evening labouring over it, getting basically no where because the thread kept breaking about every foot. oh my goodness, was that frustrating! i tried everything: changed the thread spool for a brand new one, changed the needle (twice), cleaned out the interior of the machine (which was pretty clean), adjusted tension, adjusted bobbin tension, switched bobbins, changed the needle a 3rd time. after a while, i remembered having the identical problem with this same thread on "radiant suzy" many years ago. i looked up blog & intsa posts to see how i solved the problem before. the answer last time was "tension." that was unhelpful as i'd already adjusted that as much as i could and was getting no where. 

i finally changed machines altogether. i'd been working on d5's 2020 juki and switched to my original tl2010q for two reasons: the 2020 special edition doesn't go quite as slow on the turtle and the thread looked like it was getting rubbed somewhere along the path to the needle, and the original machine was the one i'd done this quilting on before and gotten it to work on. i'd been meaning to switch around which machine does what in the sewing room set-up anyway. it makes sense that the piecing machines are closer to the pressing table and across from each other and that the quilting machine is at the end of the table where there's more runway for the bulk of the full quilt behind it. that's all settled and situated now.

it took a trial run or two to get the tension correct on the new/old machine, but in the end it worked. hallelujah! i'm so much happier now. seriously, i could have probably completed the entire quilt in the time it took me to do a 1/3 of it with the thread breaking constantly.

weekly report

piecing

• d4's 16th birthday quilt flimsy completed

epp 100 days project

• i will be talking about this project next post. it's not a new project but a new approach to an ooooold project. i'm doing a little epp every day in hopes of moving the 13 yr old wip towards the finish line.

quilting

• "frosted forest star" straightline quilting begun

handquilting

• 4.25 "groovy liberty" blocks stitched (10.25/42)

planning/fabric pulls

• selected a pattern and fabrics for d5's next project: constance

purchases

• "constance" pattern from jennifer jones at "penelope handmade" (but this isn't for me)
• no fabric! that's two months straight no fabric purchased