Sew Kitschy

After completing the And Sew On BOM last year, I knew I would also join in with Kristy's BOM this year, Sew Kitschy.  Then January came and pretty much went as fast as it had arrived.  I didn't think it was going to happen.  Then, out of the blue, I just did it.  It's quite a simple pattern, perfect for beginner but I wanted to add something more to it.

So I made an economy block for the potholder!  Yep, just the one economy block.  And it has a little birdy sitting on an arm chair.  

And here's my finished block.  Our kitchen has black counters and hob and a black floor, the cabinets are all white and the walls will be when we paint them.  The tiles are multi-coloured so any colour scheme goes, though I'm drawn towards red.  I bought some new oven gloves in Tesco last week which are red gingham with little birdies.  I wanted to piece the oven glove in red gingham but the only one I had was too dark, so I went with this pretty print.  The back ground fabric is black to represent our kitchen counters.

Now I had an issue.  Not the FMQ issue (which I'll come to later), this was when I came to quilt the potholder.  It just wouldn't work, I couldn't sew it.  Then I realised why.  I'd forgotten to remove the paper!! Just from that square.  Surgery was required.

I'd already quilted the background so I couldn't just undo it!  I cut a hole in the back and wrangled the paper out.

So what do you think of the quilting?  I took Trudi's advice and FMQ'd random swirly loops.  I'm sure it looks like a dog's dinner to all your accomplished quilters, but I'm quite chuffed with it.  I had an issue 3/4 of the way through.  I'd just finished quilting, turned it over and it was loop and nest city on the back!  You know what I'd done?  I'd forgotten to put my presser foot down!  I made sure to keep checking after that.  

The potholder and glove are done in straight lines in a grid, just like my real oven gloves.  And that hole I cut in the back?  (not sure why Blogger is forcing me to have this bit of text centred)

I used a small square of fabric and glued hems around the edges, then glued it in place and quilted over it!  It is the back!

I think you can see I have slight tension issues, along with wibbly stitching, but my tension wheel doesn't seem to do anything at all.  I'm convinced it's just there for decoration!

I used what little there was left of the oven glove print for binding, but it was nowhere near enough, so I added in some of the blue star from the economy block.  My binding is a mess.  There was no way I was doing this by hand, my evening sewing is my crewel work at the minute and this is a trivet, so I did it on the machine.

And ripped half of it out as it hadn't caught the binding on the back, and redid it.

And it still looks a mess.  It's staying a mess.   After all, this is a trivet"

This is sitting on our ceramic hob, the perfect place to put hot dishes taken out of the oven.  I asked Mr CA if he knew what it was.  He said "yes, it's to put hot dishes on", so I explained that I wanted to know if he knew what the picture was.  He said "yes, it's a bird or something on a chair."  Oh dear...