Spoolie Bird

Spoolie Bird is a mug rug pattern by Stitches of Love. It was intended to be a 6″ by 7.5″ pattern. I enlarged it to a 12″ by 14″ mini quilt. The picture shows more wrinkles in the background fabric than is visible in real life so I am going to take the binding off this one, use heavy starch and redo binding. Which brings me to another tip.

I always take pictures of my work during layout, during work in progress and finished product. It is amazing what you will see in the photograph that you don’t see with the eye. When I am looking at pictures during the layout, I am looking for values and repetition of pattern that is not right. During sewing I am looking at the same as the layout and to be sure I have sewn pieces into the right place. Then the final picture is once again checking layout, values and in this case wrinkles and pleats where they don’t belong.

Once I finish this one AGAIN. I will show picture and we will see if I made a difference with the background. One thing about quilting you must be willing to be friends with your seam ripper.

Well, I took the binding off and used a heavy dose of spray starch. I also lifted the edges and sprayed adhesive on the batting and smoothed the top over the batting. It looks better.

Moral of the story: don’t skip on starch or spray adhesive.