Friday Night Sew-In Report

Q. What do you get when you cross poison ivy with a four-leaf clover?
A. A rash of good luck.
–Unknown

I had a really nice Friday Night Sew-In. I got the rest of this cute little wall-hanging that my mom made quilted. It was a Block of the Month at the quilt shop near her. She and her friend signed up together. It was $5 for the first kit. If they finished their blocks and took them back the next month, then they'd get the next block for free, and so on. But just after they signed up, her friend's husband found out he had terminal cancer. So my mom did both blocks each month and finished this one for her friend. She's going to surprise her with it for her birthday next month.

You can get a better look at some of the details below. I think the stripey front door is my favorite. I set a little button doorknob on it to see how it would look. I had fun adding details to the building. I put shingles in the roof, quilted along the lines in the brick fabric, and did pebbling in the sidewalk. I quilted the window above the door to make it look like stained-glass and added some details to the “quilt in the front window.”

Here are the other blocks. I fiddled with the contrast on the photo of the sewing machine so you could see the quilting. It is nothing really exciting. I wasn't really inspired with a great idea of how to quilt it, so I did a bit of “chicken scratch,” which is a term I borrowed from the automotive world. Chicken scratch is a bit of free-hand embellishment along the pin-striping of a car, or sometimes near the door handles or other trim. I did a tight meander in the background and like the little fan I quilted in the hand-wheel. I had more fun with the little tomato pin-cushion. The loops in the background set it off nicely and I had fun sewing in details to make it look like the real thing. The rotary cutter was fun to do as well. I tried a bit of McTavishing in the background, added a bit of detail in the handle, and did a swirl in the black center of the cutter.

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