In other news, I've been working away on my Japanese quilt. It's really starting to come together! I love the black strips in between, making it like a window frame.
I'm struggling a bit with squaring the blocks up. I use a rotary blade but they dull so quickly and are so expensive. I did some research and people suggested rolling the blade over foil. I tried it out and I'm really not sure if it made any difference. Perhaps I need to order one of the blade sharpeners I spotted online a well. Or find a place that sells them in bulk!
I also decided to start a rag quilt with a bunch of pink and green fabrics I bought down on the coast. I use my Baby GO! machine from Accuquilt. I really love this machine. For someone with bad wrists it's really helpful but I found myself struggling with the rag quilt die. The threads got stuck in the die and I used tweezers to pull them out all the time. I also had a brand new cutting mat and for some reason the thing wouldn't catch in the roller.. I was getting frustrated. I turned to the accuquilt website and watched some videos with hints. Apparently the threads are fine, you can keep running fabric through and you don't have to clean the threads every single time! I also had only been running two layers of fabric through thinking that was the problem with the mat not catching... but when I put a third layer on it, the darn thing started catching properly! Which of course made my life much easier, as I was able to cut more fabric in a shorter amount of time!
So in two days I've cut all the squares I need and the cotton to go between each layer. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to sew them all and then it goes in the wash to 'rag'... very exciting!
I've also asked my friend Jane, the amazingly talanted knitter, to knit Casey a sweater for winter.. can't wait to see it!
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