First of all, I want to say a thank you to Donna for some lovely gifts I received a couple weeks back. It was very thoughtful – I love the little bag, the lovely sock yarn, and the Texas square she made for me!

I have so many things I want to do, and so little time. I still haven’t casted on for my sock projects yet, and I’m holding back because I need to finish up my pile of WIPs. And on top of that, I am taking a series of quilting classes at a local quilt shop. I had my first class yesterday and it was so much fun – the first session was on learning to measure accurately, use a rotary cutter properly, and work on those 1/4″ seams. I have to say, the 1/4″ seams were a tad stressful in the beginning. For a whole hour, I could not produce accurate 1/4″ seams and it was so frustrating! Then after some consultation with the instructor, we realized that the problem wasn’t me, the problem was in the 1/4″ seam foot I bought at Meissner’s the other day:

I had talked to an employee who said this would fit my Hello Kitty Janome, I was going to use my Hello Kitty machine as a portable machine for classes. Turns out, she lied. Check out the discrepancies (click for a close-up/zoom):

I ended up having to use a masking tape strip to guide me along. I didn’t lose hope over the foot though – perhaps the $9 I paid for it wouldn’t go to waste. Because I have another Janome sitting at home where it could possible work. After some fiddling with the foot on my other Janome, look at the results (click for a close-up/zoom):

I think this foot was actually meant for this Janome (not the Hello Kitty one), because it requires you to move your needle position to the right (centered), and my Hello Kitty machine doesn’t have that needle positioning option. But even then, it didn’t seem terribly accurate. Good thing that this other Janome has really good seam line guides not only on my needle plate, but on the transparent bobbin plate too. One line I found to be not just the 1/4″ seam line, but it was a scant 1/4″ seam line. PERFECT!

Just to make sure I did it correctly (and accurately), I sewed my seams very slowly. And was pleased with the results:

Pretty fun. I know this isn’t for everyone – a lady next to me in class had the same Janome foot and was having the hardest time with her seams. Being so anal and accurate can be stressful! I was thinking that patchwork/quilting in the realm of sewing was very similar to baking in the realm of cooking – you can do your best to fudge around and “approximate”, but the results can be disasterous if you’re not detailed and exact in the process of it.

Having said that, I can’t wait to practice and make more patches. =)