I’ve been doing masks on my embroidery machine and was going through large amounts of tear away stabilizer. I realized I had gone thru about 20 yards of my 12″ stabilizer and I had a stack of 100 sheets of 8×8 tear away in my bin. After doing about 20 hoopings, I had a light bulb moment! My storage retrieval system (aka quarantine brain) suddenly remembered a video I had seen through a blog post LAST year! Lisa Capen Quilts shared a video about windowing stabilizer when doing the same pattern over and over. Some call it “framing” the stabilizer and others called it “windowing”. Lisa’s video was exactly what I needed to use!
I’ve been using my reposition-able hoop for the Janome 11000, called the MA hoop. It is essentially an 8″ x 12″ hoop so I can do two masks at a time.
So, now I hoop a piece of tear-away stabilizer and do the first stitch out.
The trick is to remove the mask “gently” from the hoop without tearing the surrounding stabilizer. Then I replace the torn away piece with a “square of 8×8” over the top. I use the Elmers glue stick to anchor it to the “frame” of the stabilizer remaining in the hoop.
They don’t have to overlap, but I was too lazy to cut it perfectly and I vary the overlap. The glue stick takes a few minutes to dry, and I use the heat of my iron in the frame to speed it up. My big iron fits perfectly in the frame with room to move it around. In my small 5×7 hoop I use my mini-iron to dry the glue.
This is what it looks like on the back of the hoop. You can see the very first ones were rectangles, then I switched to a different pattern about the same size. The stabilizer was starting to wear on the left edge of the frame, so I glued on a patch!
I did at least 7 set ups using this method before I ran out of Elmers Glue Stick!. I tried liquid white glue and I had to let it dry overnight. (Not expedient!) I over applied and it wasn’t drying with the iron so I gave up for the night.
The masks in the above photo are from Creative Appliques pattern https://creativeappliques.com/
I took a break for a few days from “in the hoop masks“, while I worked on the Community Mask Project for the local chicken processing plant. Got my 28 done for that request using the sewing machine and the information I shared about the pleating and ties – Fast Masks with Ties
Can I tell you how I got excited with the things in the photo below?
On the left are the directions for the mask project, and peaking out was Step 5 for the Scrap Dance Twist, which had to wait until my 28 masks were done. On the right, in the basket are two treasures! My order of elastic arrived! And I found another glue stick in the kitchen drawer! (I’ve used 2 up so far windowing stabilizer, so I am pretty excited to find this one!).
I got busy with my Scrap Dance Twist Step 5 chain piecing the units for a king size quilt! This is my FUN sewing time!
The directions on Carole’s blog post From My Carolina Home – Scrap Dance Twist remind you to “try to make the units as scrappy as possible”.
This step went together quickly. If you haven’t started, it’s not too late. Go check out Carole’s blog and look for the Scrap Dance Twist button on the right side of her blog.
I’ve got everything back in the container, with the directions and the units, waiting for the next clue which comes out on May 1st. If you are sewing along, be sure to go back to the blog and check for some corrections to units for a couple of the sizes.
Next up on my sewing schedule is working on the “senior quilt” for my church. This is a group project that we started in February, and since the quarantine, it’s been a bit of a “round robin”. The group made most of the blocks in February –
I finished up what didn’t get done during our group sewing and got it laid out on the design wall.
One of the group members lives nearby and offered to assemble the quilt top. I took pictures of the layout while it was on the design wall, and numbered the blocks /rows for her. Once she got a break from “mask making” she assembled the top and delivered back to me. Now, it is time for me to “clear my cutting table” and do some measuring for the borders and get them sewn on. One step at a time, but nice to be able to work on something fun.
Making masks has eaten up a lot of sewing time for many quilters, and taking a break to work on a couple of quilt projects has been fun. My sewing room is a full blown disaster (as evidenced in many of these pictures!) and some “clean up” time is also in order.
Stay well, keep stitching!
Stitching Grandma 