Summer Sew Day with Nathan

When we were at Back Porch Fabrics Nathan found this fabric.

He came up for a weekend visit and we talked about ways to turn it into a wallhanging. The space between otters allowed for about a 4 inch finished square and that seemed like a pretty small wallhanging. Then I suggested an Attic Windows setting.

I made a window template so we could see what sort of portraits we could cut from the print.

There were really only four different otters but we recut one to include a different layout, then added a sky and water fabric square in the upper corner to finish the layout. Next we auditioned fabrics for the side and bottom window pieces. Then we auditioned fabric for the lattice.

It's amazing how much difference fabric selection makes.
We had lunch, we took breaks, the afternoon wore on. Nathan's sewing skills are improving but there was a lot of frogging that had to be done. I offered to rip so he could move forward sooner, but he said no, it was all part of the process and he should do it.

He has great stick-to-it-tiveness. Sometimes the miter was too high, sometimes it had a pucker. Sometimes the seam allowance on the lattice strip was a nice quarter inch but the fabric underneath had slipped. He tried sewing with pins and without. He tried slowing down the machine. At one point he found his seam was puckering up behind the needle. It turned out the thread coming off the spool had slid into the notch on the plastic and was choking the feed. He hung in there. I told him it was all part of learning to use the tools of the trade and work with the sewing machine.

We quit in the late afternoon when he realized we weren't going to finish the top in one day.

To be continued...