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Thursday, September 1, 2011

A handy gift

Do you have one of these ever so handy “thread catchers”? Or something similar?  This was a hand made gift from my daughter many years ago and I’ve used it constantly.  It goes to stitching days with me, and the (very) occasional classes that I attend.  It’s not to say that some snipped threads and the like don’t end up on the floor – they certainly still do.  But it is a gift I treasure, and is always in use.
DSCF7268 Thread catcher, a long ago gift from my daughter
As usual, I seem to spend a little sewing time first doing some mending.  The thread around the sleeve of Robin’s tee-shirt had come undone.  “Can you fix it?” he asked.  Of course I could.  This is a very old tee-shirt but one he likes to wear around the house, and was a long ago millennium souvenir tee-shirt.  Gisborne on the east coast was designated the “first place to see the sun” in New Zealand, so we joined some caravan friends there for this historic occasion.  I remember that we spent New Year’s Eve with thousands of others gathered around the town clock being entertained by bands as we waited for the clock to strike midnight.  Then we spent the night on the beach to wait for the sun to come up on the first day of the new millennium.  It was certainly a magical time and I am so glad that we were there.
DSCF7267 Gisborne Millennium tee-shirt – all repaired
What next – it’s time to work on some more log cabin blocks.  I am using McCall's pre-printed tissue foundations for this quilt, and it works very well for me.  Goodness knows if I would be able to construct nice tidy log cabin blocks without using this method.  This is a fairly slow block to make, with 17 logs in each.  To speed things up I now do 6 blocks at a time.  This way I stitch one log, trim the seam allowance, then press all six at once, then on to the next log.  These blocks are being stitched in burgundies and creams, and is one that I sew in-between other projects.  Some blocks are also being stitched for me as part of a “Block Swap” run by the monthly Friday Stitchers group, so it will be exciting to get those blocks back in due course.
DSCF7278 Foundation pieced log cabin blocks

3 comments:

FlourishingPalms said...

What a nice story of your 1999-2000 experience. It sounds beautiful. Because of all the ruckus and uncertainty about technology "blowing up," our church hosted an all night party! We all agreed that if we were to "go," we'd go together in God's house. It was a really nice evening spent with special brothers and sisters in Christ. Isn't it interesting how we don't forget these things?

Katie said...

Pretty colors in your log cabin. I'll be looking forward to seeing more. :-)

June said...

I have one of those very useful thread catchers too - and mine was a gift from a friend, still in constant use in my sewing room but more as a pincushion - the floor is too handy for the threads!