2020 Wk 11 - what I made and what I learned

Richmond and Kew quilters has a challenge that started a few months ago - we were given a random animal “pin” badge and were challenged to make an A3 quilt inspired by the pin.

I got a stag: a beautiful beast that we can sometimes see with a herd of deer in Windsor Great Park which is a few miles away.  The park isn’t very distinctive but it incorporates The Long Walk which is very distinctive.  I designed the castle for the embroidery machine to stitch (in two hoopings, that was fun to match up) then added the start of the Great Walk and the trees.  I did try machine stitching the trees but decided to hand stitch instead ...

And here is the ready-apart-from-binding result

My other sewing this week was close to (are you sitting down?) dressmaking.  I had a sweatshirt that was too short.  I bought some extra red fabric and replaced the lower 8 inches of grey with 14 inches or so of red.  I’m rather chuffed with the result

However it’s not perfect and I have learned quite a bit ...

I learned that rather than zigzagging the hem then stitching it down it would have been better to find a double needle and top stitch that way - it would have saved time and would have stopped the hem edge flipping out.

I learnt that it worked well to join the raw edges about 1/2” from the edge, zigzag the raw edges and then top stitch the seam alliance down

And I learnt that sweatshirt fabric has selvedge edges - doh! 🤦🏼‍♀️  I’ll do better next time!