White thread, chain piecing, and why I'm making sure all those flowers bloom up

Winding a white Aurifil bobbin

I am a huge fan on contrast stitching but sometimes you have to break out the plain white thread. When your fabrics already include all of the colors, plain white is the contrast. I use Aurifil. Back when I was making my very first machine quilted quilt, it was what the owner of my local quilt shop recommended and that was even before I knew it was the trendy brand of thread to be using.

Bernina B350 Patchwork Edition

I don't have a fancy craft room or sewing table. My sewing machine lives on a wooden desk in the corner of my living room. I leave it out all the time. Mainly because I don't have any closet space left to store it. But I do find that leaving it out certainly leads to more sewing than putting it away between uses. Sometimes that desk does get cluttered with other junk piled around my sewing machine but I aspire to make a career out of crafting so I try to hold that space open for doing my crafts.

Anna Maria Horner blue squares

"Flower-covered sheets should face up, not down, because that’s where the sun would be." Obviously this applies to flower covered quilts so I'm taking the time to make sure every single square "blooms" in the right direction.

Chain piecing squares

This is the first time I'm chain piecing. In the past I've used the thread cutter on the back of my sewing machine to cut my thread between each piece. This time I just keep sewing. Instead of using a couple inches of bobbin thread at the start and end of each piece, I have just about a half an inch to trim. It's faster to chain piece and it doesn't waste nearly as much thread (that Aurifil isn't cheap).