Weekend in the studio

All work and no play makes Suzie cranky so I did bust out of the house this weekend.  I went fabric shopping and thrifting with my quilty sister on Saturday.  On Sunday our sewing circle, S4, gathered together at a members house for sharing, sewing and eating.  Emphasis with our group is always sharing first closely followed by eating!

I still had plenty of time to work in the studio.  I decided to use up some left over charm squares and made these

I figured out something that all of you probably already know.  I made the pattern for burp cloths using freezer paper.  For the longest time, I just pinned it to the fabric and cut.  This time I ironed it on and then simply cut around the fabric.  Hello?  How easy is that?!  I also used to cut out the backing fabric as a separate pattern piece.  No more.  I cut a rectangle of the backing about 1/2 an inch larger than the cover fabric, placed the fabric right side down on the backing, sewed a 1/4" seam on the "good" fabric and THEN cut away the balance of the backing fabric.  Worked like a charm and so much easier!

I also worked on quilting this baby quilt using my walking foot.

Free motion is so much faster than line quilting but I wanted the quilting to highlight the graphics.  I still have to do the border and that will be a simple meandering loop.  About another 2 hours to finish quilting and binding and I can add this to my "finished!" pile.

I have a Fiskars cutting board that I have been using for a long time.  One side is pink and the other side is sort of a florescent green.  I have banged up the pink side pretty well so I recently flipped over to the green side.  After using it for about a week, I noticed this

The cuts from my rotary cutter are cutting away the laminated color finish on the board revealing the standard Fiskar grey cutting mat below.  I don't care about the color.  What I care about is the fact that this is peeling apart!  It did not do that on the other side.  Looks like I will be going back to using an Olfa cutting mat.  I hate it when my mother is right - you get what you paid for!