Gadgets and Petals

You may remember a little while ago I was excited about getting a Curve Master foot for my sewing machine. And was then pissed off disappointed to find when I read the small print that my Bernina required a shank adapter in order to use said Curve Master. I bit the bullet and ordered the shank adapter, hoping all the while that the foot was going to be worth the outlay. I am very relieved pleased to say it was totally worth it. It's my new favorite sewing gadget!

 My curve master foot.

Obviously it's designed to make curved piecing easy. And it does - once you get used to moving the fabric through the foot (you need to hold the top piece up in the air) its very quick and painless to sew accurate curves. What I didn't realise is that it also allows you to sew a perfect scant 1/4" seam on straight piecing too. For someone who is accurate-seam-allowance challenged (like me for example) it is so worth getting one! Plus all my curves sit really flat, and I've had no problems with puckering etc - all due to the foot, not my abilities :o)

I still actually haven't finished cutting my fabric for the Retro Flowers QAL, but I wanted to give some piecing a go so I've cut enough for a few flowers (and will do the rest when I need to. Not in any great hurry to get back to the cutting!)

First petal attempt - you can see the side seams aren't perfectly matched - I'm not really that phased by them (and you can't really notice from a distance, and I'm too lazy to unpick and resew them)

Second petal attempt - a bit better than number one, the seams pretty well match up perfectly (yay!!) Not sure what I did differently for this one, but the seams are much more accurate.

I promise I won't bore you with any more petal by petal accounts for this quilt - I'm just so impressed with the curve master I couldn't resist. 

The other gadgety thing I've gotten this week isn't all that gadgety, but it is extremely useful, so I guess that counts as kind of a gadget, right? The supplies have been sitting in the garage for a month or so... but Mr E is on holidays for the next couple of weeks, and I finally conned him into setting up my design wall. I apologise for the truly awful photo - my sewing room/study is too small to get far enough away to get a decent photo, so it's taken from the side... Anyway, it's simply constructed by covering three pieces of 3mm thick MDF board with batting (I think they were each 120mm x 60mm), taping the batting to the back, and then nailing the boards onto two 180mm long planks of wood. So it's portable and not too heavy to move around, and it's the perfect size for the space between our filing cabinet and the doorway in my sewing space (the only wall in there that isn't a window or taken up with shelves). 

Right, back to some more curved piecing. Oh and trying to come up with something brilliant to make with this little bundle of prettiness for a Fat Quarterly Designer challenge...

 

 

xx Jess