Look at what I finally got around to doing tonight. When you’re not actually leaving the house there isn’t much motivation, but we’re starting to get out and around more so it needed to be done.
The first with the white thread was my test run. If you all recall my many years of whining on my podcast, I’m not really fond of doing stuff like this. I tend to get testy around anything that smacks of garment sewing.
That being said, I knew even I could handle this simple version.
I’d looked around for patterns and downloaded one from AccuQuilt (since I’ve been on their site a lot lately, ahem). Well, dang, the AccuQuilt pattern left out the very important step of leaving a hole for turning it right-side out after you’ve sewn in the elastic. As I hadn’t read ahead when I first sat down to start sewing this puppy up, it wasn’t until I got to the third side that I thought, “Aren’t I going to need a hole?” Sure enough, I was supposed to start sewing a few inches into the first side…something the pattern had neglected to remind me. So I ended up leaving my hole in the end where the elastic is, which made it all sorts of fun to try to turn. And then, of course, I did manage to sew through the elastic when I was doing the edge stitching, so I had to do some ripping and adjusting.
Before tackling the second one, I watched Jenny Doan’s tutorial on YouTube. Same design, but watching someone go through it was helpful. Plus I changed my thread to match the fabric (now that I was committed to making a decent one). The second one went swimmingly (no reference to a pattern needed at all) and looks much better.
I’ve cut the third one—I got three out of one fat quarter. I have a lot of fat quarters that haven’t found their way into projects in years so this will be a great stash buster. Who’d-a-thunk back in my podcasting days I’d ever say “Need a stash buster? Make face masks to protect you from rampant contagion!”
If I weren’t so darn hungry I’d knock out another few tonight. However, my daughter’s making dinner so I think I’ll go downstairs and hover to see if I can casually speed things along. More masks later!
If you’re interested in Jenny’s tutorial…