Waiting...

....and waiting, still. As of today it has been 3 months and 11 days since my sewing machine went into the shop.

Long story short, I'm told that the Janome Horizon Memory Craft 8900QCP is the only one of Janome's models in which the LCD light is tied into the mother board. When one goes, so does the other. The light, which was my issue, is an inexpensive part. The mother board, however is far from inexpensive. And apparently there are enough Janome 8900 owners having this issue (found two other people with the same complaint in my Janome 8900 Yahoo group, which is fairly small) that the factory has the mother board on backorder until the end of this month.

Since projects are piling up, I decided not to add any more to the pile except this one, pieced from the October Quilty Box selection, curated by Leah Day.

Leah has been my go-to for free motion quilting tutorials for years now, and I really like the batiks that she designed for this project. Here's the tutorial for this quilt.

So the top is finished, but the quilting, which will be free motion outline quilting, is waiting for the machine. (Refer to the previous post to see why I'm rolling my eyes at the use of that phrase.)

I also made the quickie project included in the Quilty Box, the Tutu Notions Holder and Pincushion, which only required a small piece of fabric and a canning jar, lid and screw band to complete.

Haven't decided what threads, etc. to put in it yet.

What has really changed in the last two months, while waiting for the machine, is that I've become obsessed with knitting again. After sewing the buttons on a long-finished sweater for granddaughter Lucy...

...I've started a sweater for her from Alice Starmore's book, The Children's Collection, from a pattern called "Secret Garden." The book's photos of the sweater, which is made from a different color yarn than that pictured at the link, had me practically drooling. I'm knitting a size well in advance of Lucy's age so I can take my time and break away when needed, for landscape quilting...that is, if my machine ever comes back!

Have a great week and, if you're in the U.S., a happy Thanksgiving. 

Linda

A Mother's Day Chuckle

This week involved no free-motion quilting, I'm sorry to say. However, things moved along swiftly for the two donation quilts, headed for the Center for Women and Families.

The quilt-as-you-go blocks are joined in rows; all that's left is topstitching the front joining strips (I'm out of matching thread, otherwise that would be done), then squaring and joining rows and, finally, squaring and binding the quilt.

While waiting a day to purchase the thread, another "Lucy project" (for my baby granddaughter) was pulled from the drawer for some further work. (If knitting isn't your thing, just skip the next paragraph and move on to the funny Mother's day card.)

Using all six strands of embroidery floss instead of regular sewing thread. Faster and more secure.

The buttonhole band is being joined to the sweater at the same time the buttons are being sewn on to the button band. It's the only way I could think of to align the buttons and the holes properly, as the bands are, per directions, knitted slightly shorter than the sweater edges (to keep the front edges from stretching with wear), and--big mistake--instead of calculating the percentage of the button-band length to the sweater-front length and sewing it up with a precise stitch count, I eyeballed it. Not good! After that I couldn't just sew the second band (the buttonhole band) to the sweater in the same manner and expect the buttonholes to be spaced exactly like the buttons. So instead I measured the overall button spacing on the button band and marked it with safety pins, sewed the first button on, and then stitched the buttonhole band as far as the first hole, making sure the hole landed directly opposite the button. Then I buttoned it and began the same process for the next button. This should work as long as I don't get cross-eyed in the process...but it's still eyeballing. Lesson learned. Next time I'll do some counting and get out the calculator. Or better yet, come up with a standard percentage for band length vs. sweater-front length. Someone's probably already done that. I should Google it.

Moving on. With Mother's Day on the horizon, I wanted to share one of my cards from last year. This came from my older son and his wife (Lucy's parents) and still cracks me up.

All year long, I've kept that card on my bookshelf. Notice what's sitting in front of it....

...'nuff said. (I think the painted one is a dinosaur.) Actually, the piece on the left was made by him; the one on the right was made by my other son.

Here they are, by the way, our two wonderful, grown-up boys, each pictured holding Lucy: Papa Alex on the left and Uncle Aaron on the right.

And here's Lucy and her Mama, our awesome daughter-in-law, Shannon.

Happy Mother's day, beautiful lady. Thank you and Alex for your incredible gift, to this family and to the world.

Lucy Maeve, 7 weeks old

Linking up here with some other moms and their quilting blogs:
Confessions of a Fabric Addict's Whoop Whoop Friday
Lizzie Lenard's Vintage Sewing's Free Motion Mavericks
A Quilting Reader's Garden's WIPs Be Gone

Happy Mother's Day to them and to all who are mothers or who have ever nurtured another human being or animal. We need lots more of you on this planet.

Linda

Backing a Bet

This week was a wrap (no pun intended) for my second quilt-as-you-go project, again destined for The Center for Women and Families, and happily finished in time for their February fundraiser auction.

I'm more than pleased to say that this was made entirely on my late mom-in-law's 1962 Singer 503a Slant-o-matic sewing machine (at right)--and that every time a strip of four blocks was joined to the previous four, the ol' gal pounded through 10 layers of fabric and 2 layers of batting at each intersection, with no hesitation. Then again, I've seen video of this model stitching through 12 layers of denim.

I'd be stunned if my newer machines could do that, sorry to say.

As mentioned in the last blog post, there are some really funky blocks in this quilt (95% pieced from the upholstery fabric samples donated to me last year):

The arrangement of blocks was decided taking only the fronts into account, since they were my focus. The backs of the blocks had been cut from only a few different fabrics. Knowing it would be impossible to do a perfectly balanced color/tonal arrangement of the fronts and backs, I decided to let myself be 'surprised' by however the back of the quilt turned out.

So, believe it or not, I didn't really look at the back until everything was joined. I just crossed my fingers and figured the block backs might just serendipitously fall into at least a halfway sensible arrangement...

...and this is what I got.




I mean, seriously?!!??

Remind me to never go to Vegas. Haven't been there yet, and maybe this is why...I am one bad gambler.







Oh well. By the way, the only truly interesting back piece was this one...

...which was also featured in part as a center motif on the front of one of the blocks.

















After cleaning up the studio and putting the leftover strips and squares away, I retrieved this very important storage container from the closet...

Note the name on the label. Lucy Maeve is our first grandchild, due in just a few weeks! Time to decide what to make from some of these prints I've accumulated.











Also finished this week were the pieces of another knitted sweater for Lucy. Today they'll be stitched together. This is the only part of sweater knitting that puts me off. The knitting itself is fun, but sewing everything together by hand with yarn...not so much. Also, it's been years since I set a knitted sleeve, so my memory is fuzzy regarding how best to ease it evenly and baste it. Here's hoping these flower pins and Pinmores won't make the stitching awkward. We'll soon find out.



Next week I hope to have Lucy's undersea quilt sandwiched and basted, since the back is finished!

Also this week I took a couple of hours to play with Derwent Inktense watercolor pencils. They'd been languishing in a drawer since purchased, months ago. My intention is to eventually use them on fabric, but I started with paper to practice.

The first lesson learned was that, at least on paper, you don't need to put much color down. Look what happened to the original sketch (left) after water was applied (right).


Yikes! I had no idea it would get that intense (hence the 'Inktense'?). But something tells me the difference might be more obvious on paper than it will be on fabric. That will be the next test.

The second lesson learned was that if you're married to an artist, he will notice (and kindly point it out) if you have put more than one light source in your sketch.
Doh!!



Time to go see what some other quilters have been up to. I'm linking up over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict's Whoop Whoop Fridays and at A Quilting Reader's Garden for WIPs Be Gone. I hope to have some free-motion work to link up with Lizzie Lenard's Free Motion Mavericks by next week. Check out all their reader links, too.

Have a wonderful week!

Linda