Slow Sunday Stitching

Today was most certainly a Slow Stitching Sunday.  Yesterday I succumb to the crud my family has had over the last several weeks, and I'm lacking in energy.  But my hands are always busy doing something; they just won't sit still.  

For a long time I've wanted to make a fabric rug for the guest bathroom in aqua and red with a dash of orange and pink.  While I was in Yuma, AZ in February, I met a lady who brought this Rag Rug pattern to the ladies' sewing circle that my mom attends.  She was needing help getting started, so I offered what help I could give her.  I've had this pattern in my stash for several years, and she motivated me to finally make one.  So, thanks to Judy from Wisconsin {whom I hope to see in AZ next winter}, I'm making one!

I found some lower-quality fabrics in my stash that were just what I had in mind - red gingham, red flowers on aqua, tiny daisies on orange, pink hearts, and a bright aqua polka dot.  Then came the tearing, clipping the openings to join the strips, and the pressing.  In hindsight, I should have pressed the fabric first and then rotary cut the strips.  It would likely have saved time, and I wouldn't have had so many strings to deal with.  Since the fabrics are single-sided, I pressed them wrong sides together to keep the print showing on the outside, and it's working great.  I've finished one-and-a-half rows and am tickled at how much the prints actually show.  

There's a learning curve to get the stitches spaced evenly.  I placed the stitches in the first row close together because I didn't want the foundation fabric showing.  It's the white strip in the picture above.  I found that my stitches were too close together on the first row, so when I added the second row, it was pulling and would not lie flat.  I took out the second row and went back and widened the spaces between the stitches, and this seems to have taken care of the puckering problem.  It was like how crochet puckers when there are too many stitches for a given space.

I was thinking this would be a several-month project, but I was pleasantly surprised that it goes fairly quickly, so perhaps this will be a spring finish after all!

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♥ Slow Sunday Stitching ♥

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