Friday, September 07, 2007

On pins and needles





Well, not really. I just got so excited about this pincushion that I saw on May Britt's site. She was kind enough to post a tutorial and I fell in love with it. She used the English paper piecing method and 2 1/2 inch fabric squares. I tried it using 3 inch fabric squares and it took me several hours to complete my first one. Problem was that I was working on it during my son's baseball game and didn't have a picture of how to assemble it, so I actually put it together wrong. (See the dumpling shaped one on the left?) I was in such a rush to finish it because I was having lunch with Pat and wanted to show her "my bad ass English paper piecing skillz, dog". No matter how I poked or prodded it, it just didn't form that cool star shape. Duh! So I go back to May's site and googled around to see if anyone else made my mistake and found out where I went wrong. I really wanted one made correctly so after dinner I took my happy butt upstairs to make one, however, I wanted it NOW so I pieced it on the machine in about 30 minutes compared to the 4+ hours of hand piecing. No paper had to be harmed in the making of this pincushion, honest. It was really easy and if I make any more, I'll do them on the machine.

Oh, just wanted to show pictures of the Halloween print backpack I made for Chris. It cinches closed when you pull the straps. I intended it to be used for trick-or-treating but he insisted on using it for school. See the loop I added for his phone? I was afraid that it would fall out and get lost. He asked me why I made a backpack for trick-or-treating and I said I wanted him to have a backpack in case he got tired of carrying it, he could just sling it on his back. You don't know Chris, he gets more excited about handing out candy at home than having to go out and work for it. In fact, every year, he winds up giving most of his candy away to the trick-or-treaters after we've run out of the stuff we bought. The teenager has more fun than he does.

Has anyone else noticed that they're spending more and more on candy every year and it seems that it goes far more quickly than ever? We usually spend over $100 and we're all out between 8-9pm. I swear people bus their kids into our neighborhood!

Gotta get to bed. We have an early baseball game tomorrow...8 a.m.!

1 comment:

Susan J Barker said...

Kewl sewing there! You haven't posted for a while so I was missing you!

And yes, people do bring their kids into "better" neighbourhoods -- my family lived and worked (custodian and security) for a huge downtown church/cathedral and at halloween we drove our kids out to the suburbs as there were no homes in the centre of a big city downtown core... My brother, too, took his kids to the suburbs simply because he lived in a low income area and the 'pickings' were much better in the rich neighbourhoods! Some of the kids would horde their candy til long after Christmas because they just did not get such wonderful treats, expecially if their family lived on social welfare...