Snowman Fetish

I told my 15-year-old I had a snowman fetish.  He was disturbed and told me I shouldn’t use that word about snowmen.  However, I pulled the word up in the dictionary and the third definition was “excessive or irrational  devotion to some activity.”  For some “irrational” reason, I’m drawn to snowmen projects. One of the most recent is the quilt “Snowmen A to Zzzz… from Crabapple Hill.  When asked if I would take over a hand embroidery group this year, I knew exactly what project I wanted to do.  Back in September I started working on a sample and block A quickly lead all the way to block Z.  In fact all the blocks were embroidered in about a 2 month period.  Admittedly that was during Soccer season when the boys were taking my car and I would wait at various places.  Which meant I had lots of down time to work on this.  I changed the borders, because after all that work I thought the quilt deserved something more.  It isn’t quilted yet and ended up hanging in the shop before I got good pictures.  Sometime in the future when I’ve quilted it, I’ll post a better picture.

As mentioned this is a block party at work, but I figured I’d post information here as I went along.  You can follow in the Snowmen A to Z tab above if you like.

Lazy Daisy Stitch and Chain Stitch

I made a promise to upload directions for more embroidery stitches.  Today I got a couple of hours at home while the sun was shining and the lighting was good. Which means I’ve carried through on my promise and recorded directions for the Lazy Daisy and the Chain Stitch.  They are certainly related.  The chain stitch is basically lazy daisies connected together.

 

Embarking on Another Project

I’ve sat through Block Parties in the past, but this is the first year I’ve been responsible for any myself.  Not just one, but two.  It is eye-opening what goes on behind the scenes to pull it off each month.   This morning was the first meeting for the Northern Wilderness block party.  This is the block I presented.

I’m showing the process in PowerPoint presentations, and I thought I’d upload them here as PDFs when I was finished.  So if you would like to play along, you will find information under the Northern Wilderness tab at the top of my Blog Page.  I’m having fun with this.

The Elusive Quarter-Inch Seam Allowance

Have you ever carefully cut the pieces for a block or quilt, then just as carefully sewed the 1/4″ seam allowance and yet the pieces didn’t fit together correctly?  Most likely it wasn’t a mistake in cutting, but rather that 1/4″ seam allowance wasn’t really a 1/4″.  I can hear more than one response, “but I used the quarter-inch foot,” or “I set the quarter-inch setting on my machine.”  Sadly there is no guarantee either of those things will result in an accurate 1/4″ seam allowance.  Actual settings for a quarter-inch seam vary from machine to machine.  So to ensure an accurate seam allowance you need to test your machine.  Here’s how:

1.  Cut three strips of fabric that are 1-1/2″ wide, my samples just happen to be 5″ long.

2.  Stitch the long sides together using either a quarter-inch foot or the quarter-inch setting on your sewing machine.  I use a longer stitch so it is easier to remove the stitches from the test piece if the seam allowance isn’t exactly 1/4″

3. Finger press the seams, and measure the center strip. If the seam allowance is accurate that measurement should be exactly 1″.  In the picture below the arrow points to the edge of the center strip.  You will notice the strip is slightly less than 1″.  Which means the seam allowance is more than 1/4″.

4.  Since the seam allowance isn’t accurate, remove the stitches . . .

5. and try again, after changing the needle position.  This is how my screen looked when the needle was in the center position.

 

Because I determined my seam allowance is too wide, I moved my needle one position to the right.  (If the seam allowance was too narrow and your center strip measured more than an inch you would need to move the needle to the left.)

6.  After stitching the seams, I again finger press and measure the center strip.  This time my strip is exactly 1″.  If your’s isn’t repeat the above steps until it is.

7.  Just to be absolutely sure, I press the strips with an iron.

8.  Then measure one more time.

9.  Now that you have that perfect quarter-inch setting, write it down!  If you change your thread to a different weight you will need to test again.  Yes, thread weight can affect the seam allowance width.

On a side noet, but related — if you have trouble with the sewing machine pulling the beginning of your pieces into the feed dogs, you might want to consider a straight stitch plate for your machine.  Below is a picture of the two throat  plates for one of my machines.  The one on the left is the stand zig zag plate that came with the machine and the one on the right is the straight stitch plate.

If you do use a straight stitch plate, be careful when adjusting the needle position to get an accurate 1/4″ seam.  The plate is intended to be used with the needle in the center position, however the hole was large enough on mine that moving the needle one position did not result in broken needles.  I think two positions from center is probably the most I could squeeze out.

My seam allowance was just slightly off on my first try.  Some might think, what’s the big deal.  Let’s say you were working with 2-inch squares.  If you were off just 1/16″ of an inch, in 16 squares you would have lost a whole inch.  So what should have been 32″ is now 31″ and if you were making those two-inch squares with half-square triangles you have lost more like two inches.  It adds up faster than one might expect and can cause loads of frustration!