Back in 2010, after Chris and I got married, we bought a lovely Amish built sideboard for our dining room with some of the money we were gifted for our wedding.
Sideboard
In November, my mom and I did our Christmas shopping trip on Veteran’s day and swung by Sew to Speak where I picked out fabric to make protectors for the sideboard shelves. Ideally, these would help protect the shelves from all the shifting back and forth of the serving pieces and pots we have stored in there. Since I had just begun quilting around that time I was going to use these protectors to practice different types of quilting before diving in to larger quilts. So I worked out the math, bought all the fabric and batting, and it sat in my closet for ages.
Meanwhile, I sewed up a few quilts for our home and for friends’ babies. Finally, last October when I was home sick from work one day, I cut out the pieces and the batting so I could begin sewing any moment. You can see them in the foreground along with another quilt that I have been working on this year.
All cut up
For some reason I still just worried about messing up the quilting (which is a bit ridiculous at this point) and they sat around the office. So you can probably guess what one of the first projects was that I grabbed when I got that sewing machine to test drive for the weekend. I came home and immediately quilted the protectors, figured out that I no longer liked the binding plan I originally made and cut out new binding. I attached the bindings with the machine so I could test out some of the new stitches on this machine. The binding change worked out pretty well for the drawer and long shelf protectors because I had plenty of scraps leftover in the backing prints. However, the 6 smaller shelf protectors are still waiting on binding because I don’t have enough of the backing print to bind them and I can’t decide what I want to use instead. I absolutely love the pillow-y look I got on these protectors by stitching along the pattern lines.
Waiting for their binding.
Yesterday, we put the dining room back together after steam cleaning the carpets and I got some shots of the protectors in place. Now I just need to figure out how to bind the smaller shelf protectors and I can finally cross this project off my to do list and call it done. 🙂
Drawer protectors – front and back
drawer protectors
Sideboard – drawers
I’m really pleased with how they turned out. I learned a few things along the way so they ended up being the learning tool I hoped they would be. 🙂 My machine’s applique stitch looks really neat on bindings. Also, I didn’t have enough spray baste on the longer shelf protectors and the fabric shifted on me. This is something I’ll need to watch for when I am quilting long stretches of fabric. I had a bit of trouble when I was cutting out the fabrics trying to interpret my notes from so long ago, to figure out what it was I was planning to do. I’m trying to be better now about writing out more detailed notes to myself. Although, I learned recently that this only helps if you actually read the notes… haha. 🙂
Sideboard protectors – long shelves
Sideboard – long shelves
Sideboard center cabinet
Do you have any languishing projects that you’ve recently finished or that you want to knock out this year?
