Buried

Work has been BUSY so I haven't had a lot of time or energy left for sewing. We have a conference next weekend so everything will be down to the wire this coming week. Thankfully, I'm not attending the conference so I get my life back next weekend. However, I couldn't wait until then for some sewing therapy so I gave myself permission to start quilting the quilt and I'll do some job-work tomorrow before the football games.

I started laying out the quilt sandwich on my bedroom floor but soon got very tired of crawling around down there. I'm old. I enlisted DS#2 to help me carry the layers into the sewing room and I worked on it in sections on my cutting table. Quilt basting spray is immensely helpful for this, and I also did pin it at regular intervals. I know this is supposedly not the ideal way to do this, but it worked fine for me.

Finally, I was ready. Or so I thought. I originally wanted to do freehand meandering on the blocks and spent a couple of hours practicing that. I have done it before so it wasn't completely new, but I had to play with my machine to find the best settings again. The built-in free-motion stitches are rubbish.



Free-motion practice went well, but once I had the quilt at the machine and started wrestling it, I knew the meandering was not going to be a wise choice for my foray into machine quilting something bigger than a table runner. I decided to opt for straight line, NOT in the ditch, quilting - following the shapes of the block pieces and attached my walking foot to give it a go.



I spent a few hours wrestling it like this …



… but I did finally get into a rhythm.



I first tried rolling up the sides but that was actually harder to manage than just keeping it flat and moving everything around as necessary when pivoting at corners. As you can see, there is actually an extension table under there, which is a curse and a blessing. The curse part is because the quilt gets caught on the back corners of the extension table when I'm turning it. I may have to move this operation to the dining room table where I can have more tabletop behind the machine, but I'm resisting that because I don't want it on my dining room table for the next year. ;-)



I now have a grand total of three quilted blocks. At this rate, I might finish in 2015.



Can you tell which blocks are done? The near blue/white pinwheel, the green/plaid star above it, and the blue/pink basket on the right of the star.

Oh, and while my machine was at the hospital, it developed a squeak that is driving me CRAZY. But I don't want to take it back in and be without it again so I'm hoping it works itself out. You're not supposed to oil Vikings so I don't want to start squirting into it willy-nilly. If it doesn't stop soon, I'll be forced to give it up again because this is something I can't live with, like I did with its previous problems.

They're Back!

Yes, yes, my men are back from their trip up north, but really, what's equally as important is my D1 is back too! My home is again full and complete. ;-)

Here she is. Notice the working Fix and Reverse buttons lit up, and the working lights. The bobbin winder is under the lid but it's fixed too. And, lastly, the needle threader works again.



These are the "bad" buttons. A $6.00 part. Well, only two of them are bad but the whole panel is one unit as you can see.



All of the parts totalled only about $40. It was the $89 in labor which was the biggest charge. But still, it's hundreds cheaper than I was expecting so I'm not complaining. Except to wonder WHAT TOOK ME SO LONG?? I'm still holding final judgment on the issue with the lights. The tech said that they kept burning out because I touched them with bare skin when installing new bulbs. But these aren't halogen lights so I think that's mostly hogwash. But I'm willing to be proven wrong, especially if it means that it's a $5.00 dual bulb replacement instead of a $xxx computer board.

It was strange sewing on it last night to test things out. It's been forever since I had a working needle threader so I had to dig into the brain cells to remember what to do with it, but I remembered pretty quickly. And the first thing I reached for when I started her up was the presser foot lever. Except — Designer 1's don't have presser foot levers. The foot raises and lowers automatically when you step on the pedal. It's funny how quickly you get used to (or UNused to) things. The Featherweight and Kenmore both have presser foot levers, of course, and there I was reaching for one of them on my D1. I had to laugh at myself.

Speaking of Mr. Kenny … Do you see his shiny new white ankle for snap-on feet? Well, that's courtesy of Gaylen who popped one in the mail to me and it got here in what must be record time. Washington State to Florida. Opposite ends of the country in two days. Thank you so much Gaylen! Sewing friends are the BEST! And now Kenny can use some of my favorite D1 feet.



And OMG but I swear this card was as good as getting that ankle! Gaylen is definitely a dog person who knows I am too and she taped the ankle inside this great card with Chili's cousin looking right at me.



My sons saw it and asked, "How did she know?" But Gaylen is a sewing friend and dog person. She just knows. :-)

I've Been Stripping

Don't you just love those really bad quilt-y puns? Stripping. I slay myself. Ahem.

So, as I was saying … I added sashing and stripping to the quilt blocks. No, I don't know which is which. Anyone?

Things I learned:

1. I'm pretty sure these blocks were the result of a swap or other bee-type exchange because even though they tricked me into believing they were all the same exact size, um … they weren't. Other clues were that the muslin pieces are many different kinds of muslin (or plain white, I don't know), and none of the fabrics are repeated in other blocks.

I had to make the decision to keep the integrity of the blocks (points, etc.) and say to heck with the sashing (stripping?) lining up 100% exactly. It's a practice quilt, after all, and I fully expect and want it to be used as a snuggle quilt while watching TV. Don't ask me why (I don't know!) but my 17-year old son always watches TV under a blanket, even if it's 98 degrees outside. Which, by the way, it is NOT. It is FREEZING. Although less freezing today than yesterday. I think we might have reached 50 today. But it was still officially freezing temps when I took the dogs out this morning so I'm counting it.

2. It's really, REALLY hard to pick fabrics to coordinate with "old lady" colors but which themselves will help the quilt to not look so old lady. Apologies to any old ladies who may be offended. ;-) I went with a dark green, gold, and not-bright red although the red looks brighter in these photos than it is. Maybe because the whole room where it's hanging for this photo is red? I don't know. I'm now thinking it looks Christmas-y instead of old lady, but that's really only in the photos. The red is really not that red. My camera just loves to enhance any speck of red in a shot.

3. Duct tape is handy when you're hanging a quilt top off french doors for a quick photo. Especially when you're home alone.

4. I have NO IDEA where I'm going to lay this out to make my "quilt sandwich" in preparation for actually quilting the thing. The driveway comes to mind, but my grease monkey son has left, well, GREASE in the driveway so I need to figure out a way to not transfer grease onto the quilt. Then again, I may temporarily rearrange some stuff in my bedroom instead so I can lay it out in the "sitting area." Said sitting area is actually dog bed area, which means heavy-duty vacuuming before any quilt is laid down there and probably shooing dogs off the quilt while I'm working on it. It will also be warmer to do it there vs. the driveway, although "they" are telling us it may hit 70 by Friday. Woot!

5. I love LOVE my Featherweight! I won't be able to quilt on it because the harp is way too small, but that little beauty sews 1/4" seams like magic. I love the sound it makes too. It's very hypnotic.

6. I like strip quilting because it's more of a no-brainer. Intricate blocks, though I love them on finished quilts, kill me. My Stars & Stripes may never get done, although I hope I do muster up the motivation because it's going to ROCK whenever it's done. Strip quilting is relaxing. Nothing to fit onto my body. No pattern tissue to wrestle with. Pretty much just cut some straight lines and sew.

Here's a straight-on shot of the quilt top. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you should be able to see where some of the blocks don't quite line up they way they should. But once it's in use, no one will ever know.



D1 Update: Still in the hospital. The $140 quote does include the Reverse, the Fix, my bobbin winder, and the needle threader. I think that's pretty much a bargin. Or bargain, if I could catch typos. Now that they have my OK to fix those things, they will also open it up and test the problem with the lights burning out. If that's an expensive fix like I'm afraid it will be, I'll continue to live without lights. There was a communication gap that seems to have been fixed now and I received at least 4 calls between yesterday and this morning. But I probably won't have it back until next week. We'll see. The repair guy doesn't make a trip to that store every day. I'm in quilt-y mode and I really need the D1 for that since it has a pretty good harp space. But I may just go ahead and start reacquainting myself with free-motion quilting on the Kenmore.

Detour

No, this hasn't turned into a quilting blog. It's just that I'm not in the mood to sew clothes for me. But I don't want to finish up the last scrub top for my sister either. Part of my lost garment mojo is still not having my machine. Part is a need to clear out Stuff Taking Up Space. Yes, I'm aware of the irony of that statement vs. the lone scrub top.

The good news is that my machine should be done early next week and I think it's going to cost a LOT less than I was anticipating. Fingers still crossed on that one because there was also a bit of a misunderstanding as to what they were supposed to look at. How, I don't know, since I had a big list stapled to the work ticket. But I digress … Right now I've been told it has working Reverse and Fix buttons again and supposedly the light problem is fixed, and the price quoted so far is $140. But I'm unclear whether the bobbin winder was even looked at and the saleslady at the store didn't know either, since service is done off-site. I hate that about this dealer, but I have no other good choice. However, if the total bill is going to be under $300 when I was expecting at least double that, I guess I can live with it.

Anyway, back to the photo above. These are quilt blocks I've had kicking around the sewing space for years. I didn't make them. They were part of an Ebay lot of other things and I couldn't just toss them. They are completely not my colors or style. But there's still something about them that I like and the workmanship is excellent.

So, off to Joann's today to buy fabric for borders between the blocks, fabric for sashing, and fabric for the backing and binding. It was so crazy in there that I totally forgot about batting so I'll have to go back for that.

I was also a little crazed myself by the time I got to Joann's since my car battery died and with the men all gone this weekend, I had to deal with it myself. Not that I can't, I just prefer not to. After a couple of tries in the driveway with only clicks, it did let me finally start the car so that I could take it up to the place that sells and installs batteries. Whew! There are 4 other cars here but (1) who knows if they would've started either and (b) they are Guy Cars. 'Nuf said.

And why did the battery die? Because it's FREAKIN' FREEZING here and cold kills batteries. I'm not kidding about the freezing - it was in the 20s overnight and never even reached 36 today. Oh, and guess what I saw last night during the dogs' last piddle of the night? Snow. Yes. S.N.O.W. In Valrico, Florida. WTF. No, it didn't stick, but it was sure coming down from the sky at midnight. And today while driving around, the "rain" was bouncing off my windshield. I'm a northern girl by birth. I know sleet when I see it.

I know many of you have to deal with terrible cold all winter, but you pretty much expect it where you live, right? I live in West Central FLORIDA. I think I'm allowed to whine when it's like this for days on end. I'll be whining again next month when my electric bill hits the mailbox. Whoever's idea this is for a joke? Well, it's just not funny anymore. ;-)

Off to pull the new fabrics from the dryer and start cutting strips while watching the Cowboys beat the Eagles. I'll see how far I get tonight and tomorrow before I decide to go racing back to crazy Joann's for batting. I'm hoping the fabrics I picked will make the whole quilt more Me. But what I'd really like is a quilt that I won't cringe over if we kick it around the TV room and snuggle up in it. That's all I'm hoping to get out of this.

(And yes, Donna H - I know I still have the Stars & Stripes to work on, but I need my D1 for the applique blocks, plus working on making a top/quilt out of the blocks above will help me ease into wanting to work on those applique blocks. Shoot me if I ever pick something with multiple applique blocks again.)

Two and Done

Did I say I was making three scrub tops? Hahahaha! I'm bored already. I really do not like assembly-line sewing. Scrub #3 is going on hold because I want to sew for ME! I'll send the two finished scrubs off to my sister and at some point #3 will find its way to her too. Just not in the same package.

So anyway, this one is View A from the same pattern, KS 3709. (Pattern #3708 is the same pattern but in non-plus sizes.) Making this view, I figured what the heck good were those princess seams if they stay hidden, so I broke it up with a print and a contrast. I like how it came out. The print was bought a short time ago specifically for this batch of scrubs. The solid contrast has been a stash resident for years. It all came together when I was looking in the stash for something else. I like when that happens, like it's made to be. Oh wait, it was. ;-)



I'm especially proud of this edgestitching. Done completely on Mr. Kenmore with nothing more than my old eyes and the default foot. No guide rudders on specialty feet. I suppose I should invest in an ankle for the Kenmore that will let me use my Viking snap-on feet. Anyone know where to find one online? Until then, my foot choices for the Kenmore are dismal.




I forgot to include a pic of the back of the first scrub. It's got an elastic casing to draw in the waist for more shaping. I'm still deciding whether to add it to the latest top.



No word yet on my D1. I'm going to call about it tomorrow and see what's up. I really, really, really, really, REALLY!! miss my needle down and my automatic presser foot up/down, and my 25 needle positions, and ... well, just about everything. I could never use a straight-stitch only machine for garment sewing. Not now that I've sewn on the Dark Side. ;-) But, really, the Kenmore is fine and I shouldn't complain and it's actually been nice to have a Reverse again. Plus it sews nice and straight and one bobbin lasted for both tops and still has thread, but … I miss my D1 — warts and all. My menfolk are flying up north on Friday morning for a long male-bonding weekend with DH's father and brother and I'd really love to have my real machine back for my weekend alone. Since I haven't heard anything about it, I'm doubting that will happen.

We've been having a preview of the menfolks' trip up north. It's been extremely cold all week and we set a record with TWENTY-SEVEN DEGREES here this morning. OMG. Did the weather not get the memo that this is Florida?? It's supposed to stay cold for many more days. I'm not planning on going anywhere. Even the dogs don't want to be out longer than it takes to do their business. They don't have winter coats, natural or man-made. Chili was actually shivering this afternoon. I was right there with him. Brrrrr.