Fat Quarter Sewing: The Purple Tablecloth

I’m getting to the end of my rainbow. After this one, I’ve just got the orange to go, since I don’t propose to separate the blue and purple into Blue, Indigo, Violet. Just one blue and one purple will do.

It’s back to lots of flowers for the purple tablecloth. Suitable, given all the bee-friendly purple flowers we currently have blooming on the balcony. Lavender, catnip, wildflowers, other things I can’t name because they don’t have labels.

Three of these came from my stash – I finally feel like I am actually using it up and not just pretending. I had had a set of four, but one was appropriated for the green tablecloth, I think it was. Fortunately, sets of five purple fat quarters are easily located and obtained, so I had no trouble in making it up to eight.

I don’t particularly like the striped quarter, or the gingham one: they hurt my eyes, a bit like those optical illusions. Hopefully separating them with flowers will soften the effect.

And then all I needed was a quiet couple of hours with Elsie, my sewing machine. Again, like the blue tablecloth, I needed to trim some of the edges so they’re the same length. It’s the only problem with fat quarters from different sets: they’re not necessarily the same size so some adjusting is needed. Fortunately, this time around, I’ve found my scissors. The blue one, also, has been trimmed and hemmed.

Actually, this purple tablecloth took less time than the rest: I no longer have Elsie set to her slowest speed. All the practising with the tablecloths has made my straight seams more confident, and I’ve finally upped the speed. Not, admittedly, by much, because then I wouldn’t be able to hear the radio over Elsie, but she’s faster than she was.

I’ll have to find simple projects to practise making clothes once I’m done with the tablecloths.