Members only design uploaded to my store

With my Brother Innovis 4000 machine out of order since September 2024, I was just able to complete the Members only design I needed to upload by 20 February to avoid paying a penalty.  I am completely in love with this design.  I am however not allowed to sell it or even give it away for free.  If you want it, just sign up as a member of Oregon Patchworks and download it for free.

I am still deciding what I am going to do with this one, maybe embroider a few more and stitch into a runner.  Now that my machine is working again, it is pure bliss.  

As the parts wasn't available locally, I had to get them from the USA and England.  The machine spend hours in the repair shop but under Paul van Niekerk's very capable hands he was able to fix everything                                                                            turning this

back into this. 

                                               An amazing piece of work by a master.

 

Fabric Origami Basket

At our last meeting of 2024, our quilting group, the Rotary Cutters, made some fabric origami baskets.  Starting off with 2 squares and after folding and ironing multiple times, we ended up with a cute little basket.

Mine

Magda's

Hesmari's

Angeline's

and Louise-Marie's

If you want to make one yourself, just follow the instructions here.

Jelly Roll Rug

Our quilting group, the Rotary Cutters, decided on Jelly Roll Rugs as our first project for the new year.  I had two similar Jelly Rolls of 25 strips each and combined them into one long strip.

50m fabric strips

After this step, the fabric gets rolled onto a pvc pipe awaiting the next step.  Luckily my husband had a pipe laying around and asked our neighbor to saw 2.5" lengths which I could give out to all our group members at our meeting on Wednesday.

We are now awaiting our rolls of precut batting which are ordered from Temu to continue stitching the fabric and batting into a long tube.

In order to create the tubing, we also bought the Clover Fabric Tube Maker which just make the process so much easier than folding by hand.  

Now, you don't have to buy all these nice to have's.  You can buy your own fabric and batting and cut them to 2.5" and 2.25" respectively over the width of fabric.  If you want to get a Clover Tubing tool, they are available here on Clover and Stitch's page.

I joined a Jelly Roll Rug group on Facebook and found very handy tips as does Uniquely Mateo.

With the tubing you can create placemats, bags etc. in any shape or form with circular and oval shapes by far the favorite followed by rectangle mats.  One thing to remember though is that they will slide on tile or wooden floors without something attached to the back to keep them in place, but placing on carpeted floors, no problem with sliding and it can then be used on both sides.

Below is a beautiful bag created with the tubing.

So watch this space as we proceed with our individual projects.

How many irons does a quilter need?

Well obviously not only one.  When travelling to classes, small handy travel irons are a handy tool or purpose-built quilting irons which are still smaller but a lot more pricy.   

In a previous post I wrote about the three irons I used, but that has now grown to 4 after I was one of Fabric8's raffle winners which they held during their Craftcation in September 2024 and is now also the proud owner of a Prym mini steam iron.  

From left to right are the Russell Hobbs Slipstream steam generator which has a separate water tank,
an ordinary steam iron, a steam travel iron and last but not least the  little Prym.  

I have been using the Russell Hobbs Slipstream since 2012 with never any problems like ordinary irons which water tanks always starts leaking or the electric cords breaks.  The only problem I encountered was when it needed new water softener cartridges, none was locally available but with a daughter living in the UK, I was able to get 4 replacements from Amazon.

The travel iron will now revert back for that use.

The Prym iron is actually smaller than my hand but what a little beast this one is.  It heats up in no time and is extremely useful when ironing small pieced blocks and is real handy dandy with those corners and yes, it does have a water tank and steam!  Thank you Fabric8!