Thank God for Technology....

It’s been a busy week around Casa de Fields.

Summer is always hectic at my “real” job and this  summer is blessedly no exception.  It’s cut down on my quilting time, but I will take the job craziness any day over struggling to find projects.  I’m also working hard with The Applique Society to continue to get things streamlined and up and moving forward.  Add to that I’m also contacting past and potential vendors for my guild’s 2017 show, and life is crazy.  But it’s crazy in a good way, and I’m not complaining.   This too shall pass and I will hit a slow spell and will quilt to my heart’s content.  Retirement is sounding better every. Single. Day.

I did make a new purchase this week.  Becki, one of the High Point Quilt Guild members, did a presentation on the Brother Scan and Cut at our last guild meeting.  I have seen these in stores and on line.  A few of my friends have them.  However, I had never contemplated purchasing one for myself.  I am pretty much “old school” when it comes to quilting please take no notice of that computerized sewing machine on the table or the other one in the corner.  I don’t  mind making my own templates or manually cutting out fabric.

But remember, I’m in the middle of The Farmer’s Wife Quilt.  That pattern uses templates – lots of templates.  Hundreds of templates.  Maybe thousands of templates…I haven’t stopped to count.  And it uses some more than others -- for example, template 7.  I swear it’s used in every other block.  I’ve spent hours tracing and cutting out that template on freezer paper.  However, in this Scan and Cut, I can scan the template in, multiply it, and it will fill up a whole page of the templates and cut them out. 

Time saved.  Valuable time saved, my friends.

If you’re working from an odd shaped scrap, you can scan the scrap into the machine, then pull up the template you want to cut out, and it will line the template up on that scrap so you can get as many as possible and there is no fabric waste.

Valuable time and valuable fabric saved, my friends.

So like the geek that I am, I went home and Googled it.  Read the reviews.  Thought about it for a week.  Sold my Go! Baby and dies.  Then purchased the Brother Scan and Cut 2 650.

For someone who appliques like I do, it’s a great investment.  Not to mention that box of fabric scraps that were too big to throw away just got a whole new life. 

I also had to get some of this:

I haven’t used this product before, but I understand that I need it to stiffen my fabric before I run it through the Scan and Cut.  I’ve also heard you can use it to make ink jet labels for your quilts.  Typically you iron your label fabric onto a sheet of freezer paper and run it through your ink jet printer.  With the Terial Magic, the fabric gets so firm that the freezer paper isn’t necessary.  I have not tried it yet, but I want to. 

This also got finished.  

Remember my blog from the 2015 guild Christmas party?  The one where I came away with the organizer bag and the most coveted fat quarters from the Dirty Santa game?  We have to have the fat quarters make into something by the July pot luck.  So I made this little table topper.

I used a scrap of polyester batting for this little quilt and promptly forgot how fluffy that batting is.  The binding was cut 2 1/4 – inches.  I fought with that binding all the way around that quilt and it shows.  I’m not happy with it at all.  I should have cut it 2 ½-inches.  I don’t typically use polyester binding at all – it’s either 80/20 or 100% cotton batting in my quilts.  But this scrap was the perfect size so I put it between the back and the top.  While I’m pleased with the top and the quilting, I’m not super happy with the binding. 

And finally there is this.  Remember the quilt I made for my History Club?  We showed the quilts at the June guild meeting and I came away with this: 

That made my month.

Love and Stitches,

Sherri and Sam