Observations of the Day – July 22, 2019

Sounds like a drug thing…

Observations for the Day:

• Hubby to me: what a cute little funnel – what are you doing? Me: I’m trying glue basting. Hubby: sounds like a drug thing!

• Glue basting. It’s a real thing and it’s serious! I used it to attach my strips on my NQC Block Challenge quilt before I sewed them on and it’s SOOO much better than pinning. –

• You can read Cristy Fincher’s glue basting tutorial here and see how this can change your life. I have only done the strips so far, but I can say that it’s faster (on strips anyway) than pinning and for me, results in more accurate placement. After you “set” it with the hot iron, you still have time to make last minute adjustments before it completely hardens. I have found that I much prefer gluing to pinning! We will see if that changes once I try with intricate pieces.

• Lest we forget that these are MY adventures with you, I pose a question to you, dear reader– you certainly don’t think I went in and glue basted with it all coming out right the first time, do you? Of course, you don’t and now you want the real scoop, am I right? I squared, I straightened, I opened my glue bottle loaded with Elmer’s school glue and a precision tip applicator and turned it over and shook it and shook it and shook it and shook it and shook it some more and finally a few drops of glorious glue came to the tip. Then I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed my thumb right through the side of the bottle sending glue everywhere. Since I had glue all over my hands and much of my sewing area I thought “well, this is not working!”. I went and cleaned up my hands, opened up another empty bottle and tried to pour what was left from the old bottle into the new one and used a teeny tiny funnel to do so. I checked it a bit later and there has been a minuscule amount of glue transferred into the new bottle. I could have probably gone to bed and let gravity do its thing but I’m not most patient of people and therefore not the smartest of people, so I went and got the original bottle of Elmer’s glue and decided to use that. Of course, too much glue came out and so I had to use my finger to spread along with and then line up my seams. My arms were sticky, and my ironing board was sticky, and my fingers were sticky, and my fabric was sticky, but it worked! I got it aligned and could realign it if I needed to. I then went and cleaned up myself, and tried to tap the funnel and see if some more glue would go down and then I thought this entire process would be easier if I had a paintbrush and I’m sure that I have one of those little bitty paintbrushes somewhere so I’ll just paint the glue on. There were no tiny paint brushes to be found so when I saw right there in front of me Q-tips, I decided to use them. Worked ok – still much better than pins!

• Look at these stupid bottles Leobro brand. Good price, bad poduct. ON the packaging “Choose a quality, choose a life” – what does that even mean in the world of plastic craft bottles??? In Christy Fincher’s tutorial and she said that her parents make and sell additional tips for glue that don’t clog up so much. I’m might want to check it out, but this is a 2014 tutorial so I’m hoping that I can still get information on it.

• I ultimately ended up microwaving the glue to thin it up some and it went in the bottle fine. Didn’t seem to damage it any as I used it on a baby quilt, and it worked great. I may never pin again.

• Then guess what happened??? THESE came in the mail. Fabric glue sticks. I had forgotten that I ordered then. Not as precise as when using the tip, but they worked fine with NO ironing. The squares on this baby quilt top were all put together with glue basting.

• Wouldn’t it be cool if Cristy Fincher found out about this blog, read it and left a comment?!?!?!?

• Shortly before July 20 at 12:34 PM I knocked my rotary blade off my cutting table and it must have hit the concrete floor at just the right angle and a piece broke off,. I posted in the NQC Quilt block challenge FB page that I didn’t realize that could happen. 1062 “reactions” and 307 comments later, I was amazed at all the caring people who worried about me being hurt (I wasn’t), trying to get me a refund and those genuinely curious as to how something like that could have happened. Is that what they mean by #trending??? I was humbled (can you be humbled, trending and famous at the same time?

• I have so many crazy things going on right now, but I am going to try for shorter, more frequent and more informative blogs.

• May have some pretty cool news soon too, but mums the word for now!

• And YES, YES, YES, I got my Baby Lock Crescendo and I love love love it! I’m now working on Baby Lock Embroidery machine when the new ones come out next month.

• Talk soon xoxoxo and let me hear from you.