Floral version of Winter Wonderland

Last night I finished cutting the pieces for Carrie's Winter Wonderland quilt - in a floral version (I do think this would look wonderful with the Christmas themed woodsy fabrics as well, but there is a limit to the amount of fabric I can buy at one time...).

Then, remembering my gaffe of the sampler, carefully laid them following the pattern directions in the book. I think I'll use the red again for the small inner border and possibly the binding and the blue floral for the large border.

A close up of the fabrics as laid out on the bed. Something in my posture must have blocked the Corgis from hopping up on the bed. Dash settled in on the ottoman until the coast was clear. Monkey made herself scarce.

I then stacked the rows, looked at the book and realized the instructions said columns but by then I wasn't going to change my stacks. I just have to remember that I'm working vertically instead of horizontally.

I don't have a lot of room to the right of my machine, something I hope to remedy when we move the rooms around later this year. So I headed to the kitchen to get a tray, covered it with a pillow case (the tray was REALLY dusty) and pinned my number tags onto the pillowcase so that I wouldn't get my piles mixed up.  I'm using a bobbin as my marker and finding that it really makes a difference when you are using 11 piles. It seemed rather silly with the three piles for the sampler.

I lowered the ironing board to the same level as my bed and sewing desk and placed the tray to my side. I've borrowed Gus's desk chair until I decide on one of my own, and thankfully it swivels!  I was also able to do some quick pressing without getting up.

So - what did I learn last night?

• Always, always, always check which side of the ruler you are using.  I ended up cutting one of the strips at 3 inches instead of 3.5 because I had turned the ruler around.  Fortunately I figured it out after the first cut and had torn my fabric strips wide enough to make one additional square.
• There is a reason the Bernina manual tells you to open the little handle on the bobbin case...  I had a devil of a time getting the bobbin to thread correctly last night after breaking the thread. Turns out there is a little mechanism that holds the bobbin in place - you can't just stuff the bobbin in the slot. I took advantage of having my machine open to go ahead and clean & oil it. Unfortunately I probably spent 45 minutes trying to get the thing to work before I figured out the mechanism.

By half past midnight I had sewn the first three rows and pressed them. The pressing of row 1/row 2 was easy to manage to get the seams folded under the square because I could just flip the squares to the side I needed. One the third row was added I really slowed down on the pressing and spent some time trying to figure out how to organize the fabric to get it pressed in the right direction. I suppose I could just walk around the ironing board but my brain had already fallen asleep. Overall I pleased with the way this is coming together.  I'm not sure what I'll do with this one as the size is a bit small for my taste - I purposefully did not enlarge it because I need to figure out how to quilt with my machine in a few weeks time and don't need the extra bulk.