November Already?

I don't know about you, but 2018 seems to be sailing by awfully fast! I can't believe it's practically mid-November...where the heck did all those pretty leaves go?  And, why is that Christmas thing all up in our faces already?

There were a few quilty finishes around here over the last while, like literally just a few... but these days any sewing time that happens is precious as the minutes are so rare.

Remember that Fish Taco I started? Well, the lil fella turned out to be a pillow for, you guessed it, Sister PurpleBoots. We had a bit of a birthday back in the summertime and I knew she'd love it!

You all know how much I love to add words to my projects, and well, fish tacos are MY favourite, so... I got out some tracing paper and my trusty pencil and got all set up to draw me some lettering. Sketching letters is fun, I really enjoy seeing the shapes of the letters emerg. I just keep moving and reinventing the lines til I get them right, letting the shapes morph into whatever it is they want to become...

In this case, I traced the shape of the fish and the edges of the background first so I would have a defined area to fill with letters, as I like the letters to fill up the whole space. Once the drawing is done, the letters get traced on to fusible webbing and then cut out & fused in place.  If you look carefully at the picture above, you'll see that I forgot to trace them in reverse the first time. In the spirit of honesty...it's not the first time I've done that.  It made for a bit of confusion at cutting time when I had an abundance of overlapping lines, but I managed to keep my eyes from crossing and got the letters in place and stitched down nicely. Why I didn't use a different ink colour the second time is beyond me...?

With all the stitching done, I loaded it up on The Robot for some bubbly quilting and then it practically turned itself into a pillow. I can see why people like making cushions....they're quick and satisfying to make. 

Probably seems a bit late in the game to be sharing so many months later but this project needed a chance to show the world it's finished self. My guild had a UFO  Challenge in place this year, I didn't bother to sign up as I knew I wouldn't have time to accomplish a whole lot even thought I have quite a stack of unfinished objects in the sewing room laying in wait. And, although my own projects were not getting much attention,  I did employ the help of The Robot to work away many weekends quilting UFO's for a few of my guild mates.