Friday night sewing , finishing up my exchange and my iron bit the dust.

I came home yesterday and started setting out my blocks from my exchange. We finished our exchange Thursday night and I now have all of my blocks to do this quilt. I couldn't wait to get home and start this quilt. I put them all out on my design wall and started arranging/rearranging until I got them like I wanted. I sewed up the middle section and then started on the top section.










I sewed those two sections up and then stopped. I came downstairs and watched TV and tatted on my flag. I decided I would get up early and try to finish this top up...It was going together very well but it was more time consuming than I thought it would be. It was set on point for the top and bottom sections and that always throws me a little. I decided I wasn't going to rush this.

I got up this morning and made my coffee, looked around at some blogs and went upstairs. I moved my portable design wall closer to me and I was able to just turn around and pick up the blocks and sew them in the order they needed to be. It was much easier. I sewed a few and pressed and I was going along pretty good...My dog, Brandi wanted to go out so I thought this was a good time to take a potty break too. I went downstairs and let her out and piddled around in the kitchen putting dishes in the dishwasher. I guess I was downstairs for maybe 15 minutes before I went back at it. I went back upstairs and started sewing again but I started smelling something really funky....Not a good smell, either. I got up and walked over to the ironing board and smoke was coming off of my iron. I thought hmmm, smells like something rubbed up against it like plastic. I grabbed it and ran it along the end of the ironing board and it immediately scorched the ironing board cover. It was so hot! I unplugged it immediately and that's the end of that one! I'm so glad I was up there when this happened. It was so hot, I think it was close to bursting into flames. I'm also glad I didn't put it on my fabric. Boy, I would have been highly upset about that! Anyway, I was very fortunate today and have learned a good lesson from this. Don't go out of the room and leave your iron on (or any appliance, for that matter.) Turn them off just to be safe.

My Rowenta is the one that got so hot...I loved this iron, it was a great one...



I put all the blocks together and put my final borders on. I pulled out another iron and did my final press with this old thing. I picked this up at my small group. I got it for a small donation. One of our members brought it up to sell in our garage sale cause the steam part didn't work. I don't use steam so I bought it. It's nice and heavy and gets pretty hot. I will definitely watch it though now.

I'll be using this nice, heavy Sunbeam for a while...




My quilt top is together and no fires, so I'm a happy camper! Here's my top, I did this from the last issue of The Quilt Sampler magazine. There's a new issue out now but this one's still available somewhere.

Finally, a finished top. I think it turned out ok. If I had it to do over, I would make sure the pinwheels were darker so the album blocks and basket blocks would show up better. Other than that, I'm very pleased. The top went together very good and all the blocks were pretty accurate.




Here's the magazine that this pattern came out of.


Here's the picture in the magazine so you can see what the top looked like there...