IC 43: Nothing to fear but...

This week's Iron Craft challenge is "Nothing to fear but...".  I have nothing to fear, but these:

They're feet for my sewing machine. My mom's friend gave them to me (this is only a portion of the ones she gave me) along with a 2 inch three ring binder of instructions on what I can do with them.  It turns out that the binder only covers what I can do with some of the extra feet I was given!  Very intimidating for this girl who feels adventurous using the foot that makes a rolled hem!

Couple that with my thriftiness (ie not wanting to pay to have things quilted), the three quilt tops I've got almost ready and this post at Crazy Mom Quilts.  Surely with all those fancy feet, there was one for free motion quilting?  There was!

So, this week, I tackled my fear of the feet and my fear of machine quilting on my little old sewing machine.

 
Fortunately I had enough sense though to do a small sample first, because I'm not very good at this:

I think that's it's probably something I'd be able to do if I had a lot more practice, but in the mean time, I'm going to look at alternatives for quilting the quilts I've got.

Check out the IronCraft Flickr pool to see what everyone else was afraid of!

IC 41: Boo!

This week's IronCraft Challenge theme is Boo! Halloween crafts.

I saw this hanky tutorial and liked the way the edges were done.  So, I decided to adapt it a bit.

Materials:
1 yard of fabric
Thread
sewing machine
scrapbooking stencil with a neat edge
sharp scissors

Cut the fabric into squares I did fat quarters, but in looking at them compared to store bought napkins, they're a lot bigger, so you could do something smaller.



Then lay the stencil on the fabric and with a pen or pencil trace the edge of the stencil around the square of fabric about half an inch in from the edge.



With your sewing machine set to a zig zag stitch that's pretty narrow and close together, sew on the line that you just drew around the edge of the fabric.

Next with sharp scissors cut the fabric away, as close to the stitches as you can get without cutting them.
And you're done!


I also did my nails for Halloween this week:

But my nails don't often stay painted for long since I do a lot of typing. So I did them again later in the week:


Do you have any fun Halloween craft ideas?