Cutting....

I finally got all of the pieces cut out for my curtains. Yowza that was a lot of pieces! I think it was the most boring part too-I had to cut a total of over 400 pieces out. Then I had to cut a bunch of those in half diagonally. I used my paper cutter (Carl cutter) which made it SO easy. Most of the pieces were from the white and frankly, I was pretty sick of the white by the time I was about halfway through. I don't know how people can make a quilt in a weekend-I guess they have more ambition than I do. I think if I could actually work on it every day, and for more than a couple of hours at a time, I could do it faster. Here are all the pieces, not counting the flying geese units I posted a picture of a few days ago.


So now the sewing begins. I have all of the flying geese units already sewed. Just need to do the inside pinwheels, then put the whole thing together. Then stitch the sashings and cornerstones to the blocks and get a sheet for the backing and put that on.

So then while I was in the shower today I decided it would be neat to make a shower curtain out of blocks. For those I'll use plain blocks-I saw the idea in the newest issue of Quilts & More. I love my cute froggy shower curtain from Target but it has already busted through two of the holes and rather than fix those, I'll just make one. I guess I'll have to back it with a sheet like the curtains and then get a shower curtain liner to put on the inside so that the liner goes in the tub and the actual curtain stays on the outside.

I sort of broke my vow not to buy more fabric until I got these two projects finished. My ironing board cover is ripped so I need to replace it. But my ironing board is not a normal one-it's an antique one I bought at a yard sale. Not a standard size. Currently it has a cut up mattress pad for padding and some UGLY orange fabric that I had so much of I didn't know what else to do with it (someone gave it to me). I decided to go all out and got some insul-brite (some padding stuff for ironing boards, hot pads, etc) and some cute bright fabric for the cover. Another problem with my ironing board is that I used it to iron my kids' perler bead creations. The way I do that is to put the paper on top, iron, immediately flip it over with the paper still on it (now on the bottom), put another paper on top, and iron again. I guess that's a bad idea-the paper got used so much (my kids really really love making perler bead creations) that it got sort of burned. Well not really burned but nicely browned. And apparently when I flipped it over it transferred that nicely browned stuff to my ironing board. Not a problem until I was ironing blocks and sprayed water and the brown stuff transferred to my blocks. Thankfully it came right out with a quick wash in cold water and woolite but it was scary. I put an old pillowcase on it for now but every time I shift my fabric, it shifts the pillowcase too.

So there are two good reasons I needed a new ironing board cover (and padding-might as well do it right this time).