Having described feeling overwhelmed by a pile of works in progress I’m glad to say that, thanks to some helpful advice from Lisa Leeces, I am now unstuck and making headway! First up was a clearing away of the projects and the potential projects heaped around my workspace. This involved two cardboard boxes, a handy gap behind the sofa and the taking over of the spare bed!  (This opened a can of worms – just which room in our home isn’t housing a part of my patchwork and quilting obssession?  I’ve quickly pressed the lid down on that question but I wonder if patchwork and quilting has taken over your home too?)

The de-cluttered workspace. Just one machine sewing project and one hand sewing project to view!  Much better!

A pattern using only HSTs. I really enjoyed putting this on paper and thinking it through.

I decided to press on with making a table runner I’ve designed using only half square triangles. I’ve used some rustic looking fabrics from Red Rooster and I like the way the project is developing.

When it came to looking through a plastic bin of wadding off-cuts (housed under our son’s bunk-bed!) I found a UFO.  I made this little top for a patchwork table runner from a Moda mini charm pack, 2½” squares, but lost heart to sandwich and quilt it as my old sewing machine was not producing consistent quilt stitches.  Well! My ‘new’ machine is nearly a year old now so it seems time to bring this little table topper back into the light of day.  I had planned to complete the project using Jennie Doan’s tutorial so I’ve watched that again to refresh my memory.

This method of creating a quilt sandwich involves putting the wadding on the bottom, then the backing (right side up) and finally the patchwork, face down. I smoothed out the wadding then smoothed the backing over it, using masking tape to keep it taut without stretching it, then smoothed and pinned the top in place. Next step is to sew around the zig-zag edge leaving a small gap to turn the runner inside out.

I’ve made several charm pack runners using Jennie’s tutorial and this time I’ve slightly revised the instructions, paying more attention to the sandwiching process, to try and iron out a problem I had with the backing fabric puckering during quilting (of course that might have had more to do with my old machine than the method…)

So I’m happy to report work is in progress and my workspace and my mind are far less cluttered than they were a week ago! 🙂

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced.

Allison