Two mystery quilts ready for reveal!

I had lots of practice sewing with my left foot as I worked on the machine applique for eight blocks of the mystery quilt that's being run by Quilters Newsletter. The quilt is called Garden Delight, written by Nancy Mahoney. There sure was a lot of variety in this quilt! Small pieceing, easy piecing, applique, and a challenging compass. Now, all the sewn parts are ready for the reveal when the next issue arrives in a month or two. I haven't fully completed the centre compass as I'm still thinking about the green fabrics that the pattern calls for; in this case, I think I'd like to wait till I see the quilt's complete layout.



I had put aside the fabrics for the quilt to work on during the move, not much required for storage and still gave me an opportunity to do a bit of sewing. The other mystery quilt that I ended up doing was the one in Quiltmaker, written by Debbie Caffrey, called Secret Window. I fell in love with the new flannel line at Connecting Threads called Sunny Day (they have now introduced another similar new flannel line!); at about the same time my niece announced she is expecting twins!! So I thought I'd order the fabric for the mystery and have another little project to work on while other stuff was in storage...this I might complete as one quilt, or use the quilt layout as presented and my ever-helpful Electric Quilt to produce two quilts for the babies to come.

I put the parts to this quilt out on the floor to take a picture, and, ummm, it doesn't look like much. And I have a lot of fabric leftover.....I'll have to take a look through the magazines and see if I missed a part :) Unfortunately, I didn't have as much contrast in two of the fabrics I chose and you can just barely see the pattern in the main blocks. This quilt will be revealed on the web, tomorrow, and in their next issue.

do you sew with your left or right foot?

Well, I mean which foot do you use to operate the sewing machine foot pedal?

I've always used my right foot, but am learning to use my left foot. This is because after months of not sewing much at all (I can hardly believe that it was April that I last posted on the blog!), I finally got a chance to do some piecing, then I had an accident with my foot and some glass cooking dishes, resulting in a nasty wound and several stitches.

I haven't been making much using the machines as we have moved to a new home. The move process was something I would not want to repeat! Being without a sewing room for months, followed by trying to re-settle, then some very trying not-our-fault legal issues to do with the sale of our old house....finally able to get serious about quilting, only to be stalled again due to my foot....no wonder I'm learning to sew with my left! Desperation can sure lead to learning new skills!


Oddly enough, the first thing I've caught up on is "Consider the Lilies", which was my last posting in April! This free b.o.m. is offered by Val Laird; the message and the design have been just what I needed over the past while.