Saturday night/Sunday morning Sew In and a workout

I had to get a new set of needles and redo my bobbin. I put in the new needle and promptly broke it. My machine defaults to the far left and the quarter-inch foot I have on requires the middle position. I was so eager to start stitching I didn't change the needle position.

The reason I had to get new needles was my fabric of choice. I am using batiks, Bali Pops actually. It is a gift quilt, but since my family never reads my blog I don't need to keep it a secret. No annoyance there :) Batiks may seem old fashioned, but I love batiks. I love the colours and the feel. Batiks put colours together that wouldn't seem to go and they just work. I have a stack of batik fat quarters that I just look at. This is my first time sewing with them though. The needle I had on my machine was too thick. I switched to a microtex sharp. I had to do some research on needles to figure that one out. Most quilt books/patterns don't say much about needles, but that is valuable information to share.

I have two (basic and cheap) sewing machines. One is in the basement with my ironing board, but my cutting mat is on the dining table upstairs. My other machine is also on the dining table. So this was my genius idea- have two projects going on, one on each machine and get a workout as well running up and down the stairs when I have to have to cut and/or iron. I have the batiks on the basement machine and a string quilt on the dining table. I signed up to walk a half marathon in September so I am considering my sewing/stair workout as cross training.

So here are some pictures of the piles o'fabric laying about.