This weekend I made substantial progress on the quilt that I am working on….got all of the squares assembled and started sewing rows together for the top. I started to realize, as I was making this beauty, that there are a few things I can’t do without in the process:
- My Gingher shears
I do love scissors and have multiple pairs in many sizes, shapes and brands, but mostly Ginghers after discovering them in grad school. They are sharp and stay sharp (unless you try to cut through a pin or someone cuts some PAPER or ANY THING ELSE with your fabric shears….) 
But no worries, with Ginghers, for $12, you can send them in to be sharpened and this includes return postage!
Cheap assInexpensive snips
I never used to use snips when I was sewing, but these little metal ones were gifted to me by the check out person at Fine Fabrics in Atlanta when I bought an obscene amount of fabric from them. You can’t get any cheaper than free, y’all! (My husband hates when I use the word “cheap”–he prefers “inexpensive”–but cheap is cheap!) These things are SHARP and very convenient to just snip off the excess threads as you sew–which is one of my biggest OCD sewing issues—I have to get rid of that “spaghetti”! So these have become a real staple for me on my machine table.
3. 1/4″ Presser Foot 
It goes without saying that I love my Bernina 1008–I’ve had my machine for 17 years now and it never lets me down. I bought this presser foot a little over a year ago when I got the bright idea that I was going to make my first quilt for our best friends and for machine piecing, it is the bomb dot com. No more trying to see that TINY mark on my machine in front of the feed dog slot to line up my seam allowance while I am sewing my pieces. It rocks.
So, I have learned, in the process of making this quilt and the other one that I made last year that I love doing the piecing, but not so much the pressing open of the seams…and that even though I wear progressive lenses now, I still need a second pair of glasses when I sew.
Yes, I am a goober, but at least I am a goober that can see what I am doing!
All in all, I think the quilt is going to turn out like I wanted and I hope that Tracey’s mom will like it. The squares are 10″ finished, so the quilt will be a throw-size, about 5’X6′.
Here are some of the finished squares and the first two rows sewn together.
In the interest of full disclosure, I want to show you what my studio and work area looks like when I am WORKING. I see so many blogs that show PRISTINE studios with NEAT stacks of fabric and IMMACULATE surfaces and floors and I wonder to myself everytime–HOW DOES ANY WORK HAPPEN IN THAT PLACE????? It seems really unrealistic to expect that you can make things and keep your studio looking like it is ready for a photo shoot with Where Women Create. I mean, I do clean up my studio and put things away but when I am in mid-project, it is messy, y’all. Work is not always neat and clean, especially cutting and sewing fabric. I tend to work out of piles, just my style 🙂 and maybe others have some Marie Kondo method that works for them, but my working style is not tidy. So this is what it really looks like when I work:
So this is what I expect a working studio to look like…like work is being done in it!
I’ll post more pics soon when I finish the quilt 🙂
ZippyArtist aka Lori Gann-Smith 