productive? weekend

It sure doesn't feel like I've had a very productive weekend, but I guess when I look back on what I've gotten done, it was...

No photos of the things I mentioned in my last post, but I did quilt another top from the pile (rather rack) of tops waiting...

...remember this one?  Quilting it didn't go as well as I would have liked, but it's a charity quilt and it got me more experience using a ruler with the longarm, so it's all good.  I still have to bind it, but here it is quilted:

(it does have a top border - it's hanging over my clothesline)

I would bind it today, but it would make the third quilt I'd bound today and I'm about ready to throw my sewing machine out the window after the other two...  I plan to get it done this week.  I'll do it all by machine - I think.

In my last post, I mentioned this fake flange binding technique.  I used it.  While it took a bit more work to prepare the binding itself, I do like how it turned out.  I may use this technique again!

I sewed and sewed and sewed binding strips together to make enough for two twin quilts.  That's a LOT of inches, but thankfully this part was quick.

Looks pretty good, right?  And I managed to find a blue for the binding that was super close in color to the backing, which made me very happy.

But about this time my machine started doing strange things.  Like taking crooked stitches and making odd noises.  Rethreading and reseating the bobbin didn't fix it.  So I decided between the two quilts to clean out the area under the needle and foot.  Well...there was a "felt pad" between the feed dogs and then I noticed a fuzzy in the spring of the bobbin case.  I'm fairly certain the fuzzy was causing the weird stitches (little as it was) and the "felt pad" surely was not helping the fabric feed correctly.  After a little cleaning, I put it all back together and the second binding went on faster than the first.  Some of that I'm sure I can chalk up to experience, but I'm sure some of it was my machine performing better.

Gabe's Birthday Baseball Quilts

While I can't take credit for piecing the tops and they're nothing too fancy, the rest of the work is mine, so I think I'll be including these over in my finishes in the sidebar.

And with that, I need to get going.  I think I need to take the remote away from the hubby.  First week of NFL football season (not pre-season) and he's watching tennis?  While wearing a Lions jersey...  Maybe I need to take his temperature too?

Happy quilting!

Katie