Sewing Machines revisited.

I'm now down to just 4 machines. And I won't even ask how many you have .. :D
Early 1900's Gritzner Treadle Sewing machine. Made in Germany. This sweet machine will go to my middle daughter, Catherine. Eventually. Can anyone tell me anything about this machine, I'm unable to find out hardly anything on it, and ISMAC didn't have any information. Unless I was looking in the wrong area. :P

Next up is my Bel Air 600 knee peddle. It operates by pressing a lever with your knee.
This darling machine will go to my youngest daughter Tracy.

We still have the Wilson Rotary.

And the 1980's Janome Harmony, this is my go to machine for quilting. It sure does work well.

hmmm I need to take a better picture of it, right now it is busy meandering around "Easy Street"

The Bel Air is my piecing machine now, so will be getting used a lot from here on out when the Janome is busy.

Hope you all found some time today to put a few stitches into something. :D
Tammy Jean

Why do people think I sit around and do nothing all day?

Seriously, some people think I do nothing at all during the day. So here is a post showing what all I have been up to the last several weeks. Besides the general housekeeping, and cooking dinner and a little bit of gardening.

Besides the fact that my oldest daughter Dawn came down to Texas with her family for a week.. Enjoyed the time I had with them. I sent home with her my Singer 99k, with case, manual, thread, bobbins, it takes the case 66 bobbins from Singer.

I used it a lot for piecing so I know it runs great. I hope she enjoys it as much as I did.




I didn't get pictures, ( mainly because I had lost errrr misplaced my SD card for my camera) but I had made my grandson a travel pillow, and I had a smaller one that I had gotten from somewhere with the same Tiger strips on it, that I gave him. Dawn said he used them and loved them.


Now lets see where to start, I got 2 crochet projects done, need to dig them out of the back room and take pictures of them.

I got this Circle of Comfort quilt finished and gave it to a Lady who has been diagnosed with Cancer. We have prayed that it is in Remission, it is inoperable cancer. They sure are camera shy. lol.

I got the binding all on it, washed it, snuggled up to it, and then remembered I needed to add the label to it. :P






So before my neighbor and I left to deliver the quilt, I sat down at her place and finished putting the label on it.

Wish I had remembered to get the label on before I washed it. But oh well as long as it was put on there. :D

Hand appliqued on.











Then I was asked, well what if they want to send a Thank You card, where should they send it?
Soooo I ran back to my house and looked up the envelope that all the supplies came in and wrote it down on the Get Well card I had wrote up for the young lady.

Also these are a few things I have worked on.

1" Hexigons

Jacob Ladder parts for my Mom's quilt top

Another Circle of Comfort quilt, all layered and ready to be quilted

Cousin Evonda's lap quilt top is done, but need to fix a corner square.

Still need to trim down these blocks to 7"

These are a few already trimmed down.

Messed up the borders, had to take them off, so just meandering around "Easy Street"

 I have also been making some of the other 47 pinwheel blocks that I need.. that will be for another blog posting. I have had to do a lot of ripping out of stitches, so my seam ripper and I have gotten very close again!!!!!! 2 circle of comfort quilt tops put together, ripped them all apart, decided they needed sashings, took the borders off from Easy Street quilt as they were not put on correctly ( still haven't figured out how that one had happen) Gremlins I tell ya. :D
Oh and all those pinwheels up there ^^^^ yea those, they all had sashings, took those apart also.. A story for another blog posting.

Happy Stitching out there.
Tammy Jean

What I have been working on this week.

 2 things I have been working on this week. Just put Easy Street under the needle of my Janome Harmony Domestic machine.

Easy Street was the Mystery Quilt 2 years ago that Bonnie Hunter put on over at the Quiltville blog, and it is coming out soon in her new book, you can pre order her book More Adventures with Leaders and Enders
go read her blog posting about the book and take a look at some of the fabulous quilts that can be made.




This 2nd piece is one I started about 2 years ago. The quilt has been stewing in a tub with more fabric that I had bought in the last 2 years, I also had to play froggy with the quilt because I ran out of the white on black rose pattern and of course I couldn't find it. So bought another black on white, so now to mix the blocks up a bit more.

I took the table runner off the needle, and put it in the hoop so I can hand quilt the border. I think I will attempt to do some hearts along the border. I believe that my hand quilting is a whole lot better than my machine quilting lol. All it takes is patience and loads of practice.
I will take a picture of the machine quilting I did on the table runner and post it when I am finished. Its not pretty but it will work.

What are you working on this weekend?

Free Motion Quilting or FMQ.

So, I have been thinking, and yea this can get scary and can get me into trouble every now n then.
But I need to learn some new skills and one of those is free motion quilting, I can do some simple patterns, like stitch in the ditch and meandering, but to really bring out some blocks you need to highlight them with stitching.

Your quilting skills depending upon your skill level can really enhance a quilt pattern or basically take away from the blocks you just spent hours on putting together.

Now to begin this journey, I will attempt to learn from Leigh Day over at The Free Motion Quilting Project. Using some of her techniques I am going to try and enhance and practice my free motion quilting.

 First project that will be my first attempt at something other than meandering or sitd (stitch in the ditch) is my sister's table runner, it has these wide open triangles that are just screaming at me to do something with.

See what I mean, I have quilted the other parts of it using sitd method and it has the binding on it. But I don't feel like it is finished.





So this is to chronicle the steps I am taking to learn something new. You can do it how ever you feel comfortable, its not a race, I am hoping I can help someone else in taking those furtive first steps that are usually scary to do on your own. Lets try this together.

5 in charms

I have these charm packs I bought with no thought as to what I was going to do with them. Since I have scrap batting from previous projects, these charms will be sandwiched together and practiced on.

ruler, fabric, frixion pen

First thing I did was grab my 6.5 in square ruler, you can use what ever you have on hand to do this. Put it at 4.5 in from one edge of the fabric as shown in the picture. I grabbed my frixion pen and began marking.

Now I do have the 4.5 in square ruler, but its in the dining room and I didn't want to go grab it. lol
I will grab it and show it to you the next posting.

a marked charm square

Here is the marked charm square. I think I will start with Leigh Day's 1st tut, in her 365 days of fmq, which is located here .
I really like the frixion pen, should I mess up on marking a piece of fabric I can iron it off, it just disappears.



Like all things you must test it on a piece of scrap fabric.




Lets see how well I do on my practicing this morning. Check back later today to see how it goes.
What are you doing today?
Happy crafting.
Tammy

Sister's Quilt

Is finally done with the quilting, hoping she doesn't look to closely at the stitching.. lol
All n all not to bad, it could have been worse. I still have some areas that can be fixed relatively easily. As in I started stitching, didn't like and started over, need to rip out those first stitches.

I should have seen if I could have found another neutral color to border it with as it barely fits the top of my bed with absolutely no drappege off the sides or the foot of the bed.

So onto figuring out the binding, and get that on.. Sew I can sit and have something else for my hands to do 3 nights a week.





Next up to be quilted is the matching table/dresser topper

I started to hand quilt it, but may put in on my Janome Harmony and finish it out.

Easy Street Part 2 is up

 Easy Street Part 2 is up. Its 5:30am and Bonnie preset the instructions to go live while most in the US were sleeping.

Looks like my SInger 99k is going to get a good workout this weekend. Even more so than last weekend. lol
We have 128 flying geese units to make, she is using purple, and my b/f picked reds, so that is one color I will be using. Now to see how much of the red I can pull out of my bins, I have a mess load of reds in my 2.5" bins mostly Christmas prints but you wouldn't really be able to tell by the time we got them cut.

 My Janome Harmony is busy quilting this beauty. I have planned to finish up 2 lap quilt's and at least 2-3 quilt tops while working on "Easy Street"

I have plenty of the strips already cut but some are already sewn to the grey strips, guess I pull those apart if I need to to make the 64 2” X 3-1/2” rectangles for one of the next steps.






Happy sewing everyone have a great day.

Sewing Machines

Today I got an excellent surprise, my B/F went out to do some shopping, he came in a few hrs later all excited, like a kid on Christmas morning. lol
He couldn't contain himself. He had to just give me an early Christmas present.. And here she is:

 Its a Singer hard case.. open it up and we get to see this: A singer 99k

The serial number is EL 234778, so I go over to www.Singerco.com and look up the serial number, it says this machine was made in 1956. And she runs sooooo smoothly, already plugged her in and found my 1/4 seam allowance and marked it :D

Ohhhh I am sooo thrilled with this one, it has only one stitch but its a straight stitch, so will work wonderfully well for piecing quilt tops together.


And last weekend we went to the local Antique store here in Taylor, Texas and as we were leaving I happen to ask if he had any old sewing machines, he said yep, and headed to a back storage area, said it had been back there for 3 yrs. He dug it out and opened up the table. and I was amazed at what I saw. He wanted only $10.00 for the cabinet and machine together.. JACKPOT it did come home with me.

A Wilson Rotary, that has a working motor on it, it needs rewiring and we order some parts for it from Sewing Machine 221 sales
Now we are just waiting on those to arrive, before I take it to someone who knows how to do the wiring.





Yep I'm a happy camper tonight.. :D

I also have a Janome Harmony 4052.