Bigger than a Bread Box - Project Quilting challenge 10.3

For the latest project quilting challenge we were given the theme "Bigger than a Bread Box".  Our creations could be anything, as along as they met the size requirement of one measurement larger than 16″, and another measurement larger than 9″.

I was inspired by the breadbox idea and decided to make a cover for my sewing machine.  

Since I would be looking at this pretty much every day, of course I had to use my favorite fabric - Cherrywood hand dyed with a little bit of Ricky Tims hand dyed thrown in.

I started by making strip sets and somewhere along the line I thought it might be fun to add some decorative stitching.  Which led to the idea of stitching out all of the decorative (leaving out the utility and various alphabet) stitches my machine has so I'd have a reference right there on my sewing machine cover.  

Well I seriously under estimated just how many stitches that meant and just how much time it would take.  I quickly realized I would need more strips so I cut the sets I already had in half.  I filled each of those strips with a decorative stitch and I still had a LOT of stitches left.  I added the grey stripe between strip sets and more decorative stitches, this time closer together so I could get them all on there.  Once more I ran out of room and I still hadn't used all of the stitches.  But now I was committed, so I included one more strip set and two more grey stripes for the top. 

225 stitch outs and four days later, I was finally ready to put all the pieces together.  Whew.

It was a lot of work, but in the end, completely worth it.  

Stitch Library Sewing Machine Cover

Size:  23" x 11" x 10"

I create in Casa Grande, AZ

Check out all of the entries for this challenge at 

Project Quilting - Bigger than a Breadbox challenge

click the link and then scroll down the page to find the entries