Come Stitch With Me

I made over 100 masks to donate to those who needed them. This was a great way to use up various bits of novelty fabrics that had been in the stash for a while! I used the basic 6”x9” mask with 2 pleats. Missouri Star Quilt Company has an excellent video tutorial if you need instructions.

Helpful hints:

• Set up 2 machines, preferably one with a scissors/auto thread cutting feature for assembling masks.
• 1/8” braided flat elastic works well. Similar size elastic cording will work, but you have to knot the ends prior to stitching so it won’t come out. Knots can also be an issue when topstitching later.
• Mini Wonder clips are helpful, as is a wooden skewer for helping move pleats under the needle.
• Use your machine’s straight stitch with auto lock feature for topstitching. I discovered that holding threads at the beginning of my stitching meant no big knot of thread underneath.
• Allow 10 to 15 minutes of time for each mask you plan to make.
• Make a pleater board/jig. It was a game changer for me.  Here’s mine:
  

I’ve been looking through photos to select the ones I want to include in the write-up I’m preparing for our therapy dog organization.  Grief is a strange thing. It’s taken me two months to get to a place where I could finally look at pictures of Boomer without crying. Then, I absolutely lost it when I ran across the above photo.

Once the tears dried, I continued looking at my pictures and smiled when I ran across various photos of my former quality assurance supervisor and quilt shop hop buddy.

This chapter of my life with dogs closes as a new one begins.

Enter one highly energetic young Labradoodle named Sadie, who came for a visit and ended up a permanent member of the pack.