What I Did on my Labor Day Weekend Vacation Part 1 or, The Incredible Shrinking UFOs

After having a very productive sew-a-thon over the Labor Day Weekend I spent most of the remaining week in Migraineville. Even though I was down & out with the worst migraine I have had in probably a year, I sewed some during the less painful moments. Here are 2 more completed UFOs.









Placemats: I need to invest in carbon dating for most of my UFOs and these placemats were no exception. The scrap of fabric was dated 1987 along the selvage. As I finish all these projects I sometimes shake my head and wonder (again), “What was I thinking?” There are 3 placemats in this project. What’s up with that? And, the colors do not now, nor did they ever, go with my kitchen colors. Hmmm.

One thing about I like about working on these UFO projects is the freedom to try out something new. If it doesn’t work out, it isn’t a very big deal. So for these placemats I used decorative thread to machine quilt a lot of the designs. What’s the big deal you ask? I am very late to the game with decorative thread. For some reason I have been unable to wrap my head around the fact that decorative threads can be used by anyone, not just embroidery machine operators. (I know. Sometimes that blonde hair really gets in my way!) So I picked up 3 different decorative threads to use on this project—just to see how they performed and looked.

The blue was Sulky 40 wt., red was Gutterman Topstitching thread 40 wt., and the tan was Coats & Clark 40 wt. rayon. I honestly don’t know very much about decorative threads. All 3 of these threads worked well in my Bernina. I did adjust the tension and used a topstitching needle. But they all worked well and look good.

I'm planning a separate post about the Pilgram couple.