Yesterday in the mail was a wonderful surprise. Three FQs and two coordinating spools of thread all tied together in a neat package. This is what Shelly at Prairie Moon Quilts sent me when she drew my name from the participant of her End of Year Countdown.
Thanks, Shelly!
I just received this picture of the Spool quilt I made and sent to a friend before Christmas. It now lives on his daughter’s bed. I love the old-fashioned feel the combination of the quilt and bed frame give off.
It seems that after I have a big finish, I need to step away from quilting for a bit to catch my breath and work the kinks out of my shoulders. Here it is the 15th of the month and I have had 3 “big” finishes.
The first two items are on my to-do list for this year. The third is a bonus, but doesn’t get me off the hook for finishing the rest of my list. There may be a lull, but it just means I’m not sitting at the sewing machine. For the past few days, I’ve been playing with quilting ideas for Deadline III and I’ve settled on one. Now to get it marked on the quilt, the quilt layered and to start the quilting. I really want to have it finished before the end of the month. I also need to get the rest of these rail fence blocks trimmed
The plan was to work on the red, white and black Rail Fence. I was going to trim the blocks and Sydney would assemble the quilt top. The Bobbin Winder fiasco threw that plan off, and then Sydney said the quilt didn’t have a deadline, but she had another that did. Her teacher’s child has been in the hospital and she wanted to give her a quilt.
I’m not positive how it came about, but my husband asked me if I had any partially completed tops Sydney could finish for this quilt. I looked through my UFOs and pulled swap blocks. Between my husband and Sydney they decided the 7 purple blocks and 14 log cabin blocks could be put together into a quilt. These blocks had been given to me by another quilter who didn’t think she would get around to making anything with them. I had them on my Quilts In Progress list as two quilts. They make an awesome quilt together and I get to cross 2 UFOs off my list!
The quilt finishes at about 47″ x 58″. Soft and Bright batting. Yellow thread in the bobbin and top. Quilted in a wavy crosshatch.
Also “completed” this week is Scrappy Trips which I made on my grandmother’s treadle machine.
I know how I want to quilt it, I just have to decide on a backing fabric and decide if I want to attempt to quilt it on the treadle.
Up next — trimming the rail fence blocks for Sydney’s next visit and figuring out how I’m going to quilt Deadline III.
To see what others are working on, checked out the links over at Patchwork Times.
It’s been another big week usage wise. It started with quilting and completing Deadline IV and a matching pillowcase. The week ended when I completed Scrappy Trips, which I’ll show on tomorrow’s Design Wall Monday.
Additionally, I magically got rid of two UFOs – not that there’s any fabric to count in that. They were incomplete block sets given to me. Sydney sewed them together and made a quilt top for her teacher’s daughter who has been in the hospital. I’ve got about 1/4 of it quilted so should be able to count the backing and binding on next week’s report.
The only thing purchased this week were 3 rubber rings for the bobbin winders on the two Genie’s and the treadle machine and the service manual on the Genie.
So here’s the report:
Fabric added this week: 0 yards
Fabric added year to date: 1 yards
Fabric used this week: 8.526 yard
Fabric used year to date: 17.065 yards
Net used: 16.065 yards
Don’t get too excited about my fabric usage — many of the UFOs I plan to work on this year have already had their fabric counted or will require the purchase of fabric to complete.
To see how others are doing this second week of the year, check out the links over at Patchwork Times.
About 6 years ago my husband bought me a Singer Genie at a garage sale. It has been my backup machine and on occasion, my traveling machine. This is the machine I’ve been teaching Sydney to sew on. In December we won one on e-bay and did a local pickup. The machine was in great shape, but the bobbin winder wasn’t working perfectly. None the less, we gave it to Sydney for Christmas thinking we’d get the winder fixed eventually.
I also have a Singer Red Eye 66 Treadle which was my great-grandmother’s. I got it working last April and even wound a bobbin on it but the treadle winder is not reliable — yet. Sydney & I have been winding bobbins on my Genie until I get our respective winders fixed.
So, last night I was piecing my Scrappy Trips with the intention of finishing it before I went to bed. About 11 o’clock I ran out of bobbin thread for the treadle. I went to wind a bobbin on my Genie and it wouldn’t work. I attempted to get the cover off the machine and failed. Looked on line to see if I could get a SideWinder Bobbin Winder at Walmart – I could, but I would ultimately need 2 – one for me and one for Sydney and the winder at WM doesn’t wind bobbins for my big machine. I threw my hands up and went to bed.
This morning, I found the three screws which were preventing me from removing the case. I decided the rubber ring was my problem. Called the local repair place. They have them in stock and it’s same ring for the treadle. I’ll take 3.
Came home, put the ring on my machine and it didn’t work. Lots of muttering going on. Got on line searched several vintage machine lists. Finally found where I could buy and download the Singer Service Manual for the Genie. It didn’t help. Finally decided to add more oil. Eureka! The spindle spins.
So, we pulled out the second Genie. Pulled the case, swapped the ring and adjusted the bobbin stop and it’s working now.
I’m not ready to tackle the treadle winder, but I’ve got a bobbin full of thread so I should be able to get the quilt top finished!
M is for Monkey Wrench is this month’s block in Dorothy Young’s Alphabet BOM. We are now half way though the series, but it’s still not too late to join the fun. To join the fun, join the Yahoo! Group apocketfullofmysteries.
The rest of my blocks can be seen HERE.
I found another challenge to help keep me on task. The Littlest Thistle is hosting the 2014 Finish Along. To participate make a list of your Finishes you anticipate you’ll complete this quarter and then link it up. Fortunately, there’s no penalty if you don’t finish something on your list and you can roll it over to next quarter. They do however have to be DONE, DONE, not just done to the top stage. When you finish something on your list, write a post and get an entry to win a prize and more importantly the satisfaction of completing something. Oh, and it’s not limited to quilts.
Not that I think I’ll get through this list by the end of March, I’ve decided to list nearly everything on my 2014 Tops to Quilt and Tops to Complete lists so I don’t have to make a decision today about what I’ll do tomorrow.
The linky party for the 2014 1st Quarter Finish Along is HERE along with the official rules.
After putting Deadline IV into the wash, I pulled out Scrappy Trips, my treadle project. I needed to finish up about a dozen blocks. Now that I have I’m ready to sew them into a top. Earlier tonight I re-arranged blocks until I got them organized, but I think I want to swap the 4th block on the 3rd row with the 5th block on the 4th row before I sew the top right quarter together.
This is #9 on my Tops to Complete list.
I just finished stitching down the binding on Deadline IV and have made a matched pillowcase. Now I have to hand stitch down the label and the hanging sleeve. Once that’s done I can wash the quilt to see if this batting I used will shrink up. I’m thinking it won’t now that I look at The Warm Company website. I think this is Soft & Bright, not Warm & White. Oh, well, it’s done now.
