I wish I'd thought to take a picture when it was pristine: newly finished, newly ironed, and newly on the bed.
I've ended up with puckering and not straight stitching, but I'm not too bothered. I spent so long measuring, marking, sewing in lines before I started cutting; I finished my raw edges before I started working, I measured and basted everything before sewing, then I sewed. I've sewn hidden seams, folded hems, I've done all sorts. At some point I stopped taking out the basting stitches, partly because I'd reached the "I don't really care anymore" stage, and once because I realised I hadn't done a proper stitch afterwards. Oops.
To make sure that it all stays in place, I was going to coverstitch it. This worked really well for one of the four sides. Then it just wasn't working. My little Bernina Coverstitch machine has a tiny space to the right of the needles, and I was trying to feed a superking sized duvet cover through that space. It just wasn't working.
So, I decided to top stitch all the way round using a decorative stitch. My thinking was that my decorative stitch would also stitch down the folded seam underneath, if I did it a particular way I'd also topstitch the very edge of the panel down, and a decorative stitch would cover my decidedly wonky seam (and basting) stitching. I chose to do it in a colour which wouldn't show up too much.
I chose a cat shaped stitch.
I then spent forever holding a superking quilt over my shoulder and across my arm while trying to keep the seam straight. It takes a surprisingly long time for the machine to sew a cat shape (complete with whiskers). I thought it was never going to end. When my arm and leg started to ache, I tried disassociating myself from the task. That was OK, but did cause a wonky stitch line.
When it was all done, I whipped up a couple of extra large pillow cases. We have lovely wool pillows, but they are a bit too big to fit comfortably inside normal sized cases. I'm really pleased with them. I was cream crackered when I started them, but I really wanted to get the bed made. The picture doesn't so them justice.
I know that not doing this project (and knowing I should do it) has been a contributory factor to the loss of my Sewjo. I'm hoping that having completed it, it may come back.
We'll see.
