An ending and a beginning :)

December 1 I had hoped to be able to start on my next project… but instead was still Slow Stitchin 🙂  I blog frequently on Sunday’s with Kathy here… she offers a link up if you are doing something quilty by hand or machine 🙂  This week I just left her a nice message and trudged along to finish this table topper 🙂

YIPEEE!!!!!

Do you like my take on homespun stitching???

 I used perle 12 cotton thread and backstitched those angels in each diamond… there are 6 in the family this is going to.. and angel for each person 🙂  Then I signed it tone on tone!

Here are the two together…

do you have a fave ???  They are about 18″ across now 🙂  Read more about the first one here.

December 2 I officially started my honey’s quilt that will be called THE MAN quilt for now 🙂  He hasn’t named it yet! lol  And I don’t care if it doesn’t have a name as long as he names it before it is done…

This quilt started from a pattern I was gonna follow… but is ending with my own designs… I have 2 types of blocks…

These still need to be trimmed up to all be the same size… and no dogears please! lol

You see patterns are always tricky for me… I never understand what they are telling me but if they have lots of pics or vids… I do fine … so when I made the John Deere square in a square too big for the pattern I had to decide if I wanted to continue on or just make it my own design… I made it my own after consulting the reciever.. my honey 🙂

All of this quilt is being sewn with Fiona!

Read more about her here 🙂  I recently acquired her and yesterday with LOTs of help from my honey… we turned this wrinkley puckery seam

into wonderful stitches that lay nice and flat with top and bottom tensions that ROCK!

I simply changed the foot that was on her… rethreaded top and bottom… and read the manual to make further adjustments 🙂  My honey helped me soooo much because he really wants this quilt sewn together on THIS machine we found and resurrected together 🙂

This is the layout I have planned for this quilt…

I just drew it out last night… how do you plan out your projects?? Are you a drawer on graph paper like me or can you take it straight from your head to fruition???  Or do you play around with a computer program you enjoy… I have never used one and figure I don’t yet know what I am missing so I stick to graph paper, pencil, and erasers too! lol

I have learned how to make a square in a square… using tips I learned from Bonnie Hunter I did opposite sides on these then ironed then the two remaining opposite sides then ironed… much easier this way… and chain pieced them turning them out really fast… all 16 cut and assembled yesterday!  Whoop 🙂

I have learned how to make mitered corners.. thinking this was not possible for me and it is really very easy … I watched a couple youtube vids as that is my preferred way to learn but they moved too fast… so I stepped back to one of my fave blogs for tutes and found THIS!  A great tute showing the way to sew the seam… how to measure for it… easy peasy… but time consuming as it is very accurate sewing to make it happen… and lots of ironing on these blocks too… so take THAT into consideration.

I am making 16 of each block… I only need 15 and have potentially set aside one of each that didn’t turn out well… one I will surprise my honey and make a pillow from… the other is gonna be a wall hanging for his memory wall in the Garage 🙂  Yipee for extras with a purpose!!!

thanks for reading this rather long post!  Hope you leave a comment.. I will respond 🙂

Have a wonderful rest of your week… as for me.. I will be listening to the gently hum of Fiona 🙂
Linking to:
Sugar Bee Crafts ~ Take a look Tuesday here
Freshly Pieces ~ Wednesday WIP here 
My Quilt Infatuation ~ Needle and Thread Thursday here
Whooping with Sarah ~ Confessions of a fabric addict here

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Meet Fiona ~ My "new to me" 1950-s MORSE 600 :)

Fiona

Is my new-to-me approximately 1950’s sewing machine.  She has a body made in Japan by Toyota then she was shipped to the US where she got her motor.  It is dated 1956.  I have written to sewtoyota to see if they can tell me exactly when she was manufactured.  I found her on Craigslist for $15.00!!!  In barely working but great stitches produced order 🙂

My honey fixed her up using his know-how skills

And we used an old Singer I had inherited from my great Aunt Kathleen that doesn’t work at all anymore…

with a close up of her… unnamed but beautiful and not sure of her year 🙂

Her decals are still good but her motor was all burned up… so we used her tension knob for the missing one on Fiona…

 Also we harvested this plate that was on the back of the Singer to cover the hole for servicing Fiona that had been lost on her travels to her forever home…

Isn’t this lovely!  I would have missed it but my honey didn’t!

She has nice chrome in need of a polish but nothing more :)…

And a great condition sticker on her plate…

 And I love her nameplate… it is in excellent condition I think 🙂

 Her presser foot looks more like a darning or fmq type foot… so I am looking into one that will serve my quilt piecing purposes…

Finally we replaced her belts from our local Joann’s 🙂  She has 2.. one to run the machine and one to wind the bobbin…

no belts here…

nice new belts here 🙂

Of course we had to download the manual for it… 17 pages of wonderful info and worth the $10 we paid to download it 🙂

Meanwhile I continue writing to you and quilting … backstitching on the table topper I am working on as a Christmas present…

Hope you find time for yourself this weekend!

thanks for tolerating this post but I had no info when I bought this machine and if someone is new to vintage machines or this specific machine I want them to find out more info that I did 🙂

Have a blessed weekend!

How do you spend the day after Thanksgiving??

Yesterday I finally decided on a quilt design for the project I am working on for this table topper…

do you like this one…

or this one???

 While we pondered the two ideas… the first being my daughters idea:) … we enjoyed a hearty meal that we had never tried called Chicken Divan… yummy!  With pecan pie for dessert!  Double yummy 🙂

Today the kids are all with friends or napping and I am quilting… and my honey is working on my “new to me” sewing machine!

And I am sewing these with a backstitch instead of a running stitch.. what do you think of this angel ?

The tension is a bit tight but I have adjusted that for the second one.. and pinned the area a bit more for stability…

I obviously have more talent with a needle and thread than I do with a pen… but they will love it and use it I hope and not laugh at my angelic attempt! Ha! 

You see this is for my brother who is married to a lovely girl and they have 4 kids 🙂  Lots of wrestling going on with this table topper I bet!

 Here is a cute Thanksgiving funny someone posted on my fb page!  Thought I would share with you too!

Have a lovely weekend.  And try to make some time for you this weekend!  You are worth it 🙂

So how do YOU spend the day after Thanksgiving???

A Christmas Present COMPLETED!

Tah Dah!  Introducing my first all HAND Piecing, Quilted & Bound Ozark Star Table Topper!

 This work I made specifically for my mom and dad… she has most of my firsts… except when it comes to quilting… so now she has my first all Hand Done project… my 8th quilted item 🙂

I found the pattern… more info on that below but see a vid here, and bought the material for this project…
I pieced this using my fave YLI 40 wt glazed hand quilting thread for piecing using a John James #8 between (same as I prefer for hand quilting).  Read more about my piecing adventure here.

I quilted this mainly using DMC Perle 12 cotton in a lovely cream color.  I did some detail stitching around the inner star using Gutermann 100% cotton thread in cream but didn’t care for it much.  Read about some of that process here.

I sewed on the binding with a tan Coats and Clark cotton machine quilting thread and bound it down with the Gutermann cream thread as I didn’t have any cranberry to match the binding…

I found GREAT inspiration on this project through a facebook group I belong to called Celebrate Hand Quilting… request entry by Caron Mosey here.  If you are interested in hand quilting as that is what this group is about but we are 1500 dynamic and helpful HAND quilters strong and growing… so much eye candy to see and support from fellow quilters to ponder!  I have learned so much there 🙂  Many machine their tops then handquilt that top!

You see it all started when I won a class of my choice on Kathleen Tracy’s blog here from Daily Craft TV.  I was sooo excited to win a class for free… and perusing their board showed many affordable classes… check it out but be ready to download all class materials as they do take vids down from time to time and replace them.  I found help but only because I was diligent… I personally will stick with Craftsy for my classes I pay for after this experience…

Suffice it to say.. I found a great pattern to download and away I went!  Thanks Kathleen Tracy for offering me a way to make Christmas presents! 

Linking this finish to:
Sew Many Ways here
Slow Stitching Sunday here
Richard & Tanya Quilts here
Confessions of a Fabric Addict here
Merlize ~ Stitch by Stich here
Sugar Bee Crafts here

Hope you have a blessed Sunday and do something crafty of your own… please share what you are up to and what you think about my finish!  Comments are coveted 🙂

P. S.>>>  Next up a table topper for my bro & his family to enjoy!  Ideas anyone on how to quilt this one???  My mind is speeding away! lol 🙂

Quilting & Binding ALL by hand… and a WINNER!

This is my house for Thanksgiving this year… what is your house like??? lol

On this Ozark Star project I first had to learn how to piece and by hand… did well with that (Yippee!… found excellent tutorials I shared along the way… but not so with binding by hand… so I jumped in once I finished the handquilting on the sandwiched top…

here I am marking some lines with tape to mark my quilting path

And here is a close up for you…

Then it was time to figure out the binding!!!!

I turned to Quiltmaking by Hand but it only had a page and a half with scant pics on this topic… they were fast to answer my email request though and away I went!  Chartering new territory for me… do you ever do that… challenge yourself to learn something new???

First I sewed it with a running stitch above (with lots of backstitches to make the overall stitches stronger and closer together…)

Then I enclosed it on the back side careful not to come through the top 🙂

I made my binding 2 1/4″ for a more narrow binding (generally binding for quilts is 2 1/2″) folded in half and sewn to the front… ironed then folded over and sewn to the back while pinned.

Now to finish the final quilting and show off the end result.  I also have to figure out how to sign this inconspicuously.. any ideas???

Now on to the WINNER! of the YLI thread giveaway!!!

Daytona Damsel… I will email you that you won… please contact me here if you don’t get the message 🙂  You are a no reply blogger!  You do follow me but I have no way to get in touch with you… so if I don’t hear from you by Monday I will gift this thread to someone else… Good luck Daytona Damsel!

That was such a fun giveaway… if you didn’t enter know that I do 2 or 3 giveaways each year related to my posts… I always mail anywhere for free and give followers 2 entries… must be a follower to enter so enter now and be ready for future giveaways that are crafty 🙂

Have a blessed weekend!

Kathi

Linking to:
My Quilt Infatuation ~ Needle & Thread Thursday here

Busy, Busy Sunday :)

Today has turned from a quiet stitching morning to a mission completing afternoon!  Yipee!

I am ready to start handquilting my Christmas presents…

I have these TWO lovelies both pin basted with bamboo and cotton batting and a cute coordinating fabric for the backing… I am planning a cranberry colored binding to tie in the darker red of the center and outer points… here are the two tops hand pieced completely 🙂

this is the one I learned on…

This is the one I rocked I think!

What do you think?  They are about 20″ across and were pretty easy to hand piece for a first experience 🙂  The pattern is a free download from Fons & Porter here!

So as I do a WHOOP for finishing both of these tops in just a couple weeks… my honey WHOOPs about something else!

He is renewing our shed… first he moved it away from the side of the house using just 2 x 4’s and dowel rod we had left over in the garage.. nothing was purchased for that part… and he used the jack from the van! lol

Then he painted it all white with exterior white paint we bought last month for painting the exterior doors.  We bought a quart of gray and 3 fence boards to make the windowbox and shutters and have leftover wood for further decoration!  WHOOP!

As I write this … guess where he is now.. drawn back to the shed cuz it is looking sooo nice!

Daisy Mae wanted to get in on the camera action even if my honey wasn’t interested 🙂

And if you made it this far… look what I won on Ebay this week… and already got it in the mail!!!!

1940’s feed sack quilt top measures about 65 x 75 now 🙂

Advanced or Improved 9 patch pattern ~ 7″ blocks

some edges are worn 😦

It was so exciting to fulfill a biggie on my bucket list.  Do you have one??? I just wrote about one here…

Hope you have a blessed week and don’t forget about my YLI thread giveaway here if you haven’t signed up yet 🙂

Linking this to:
Kathy’s Quilts ~ Slow stitching Sunday here
Confessions of a Fabric Addict ~ Whoop! here
Richard and Tanya Quilts ~ Link a Finish Friday here
Stitch by Stitch by Merelize here
Sugar Bee Crafts here 

YLI THREAD giveaway & Craigslist finds :)

Happy Belated Veteran’s Day to any of you reading who is a veteran or active service.  I appreciate and understand WHAT you do to protect out freedoms and I APPRECIATE YOU!

This was my fave graphic on facebook this year.  You see my honey is a veteran.. I thanked him of course 🙂

So instead of slowing down and posting this yesterday I pitched in on a GREAT Craigslist find… do you know what Craigslist is… most major cities or towns have one… every area is a bit different.  I can talk more about Craigslist if you are interested… just leave a comment… for now let me show you what we scored on for my honey to use!

All FREE from one stop!

 That is right… these are PAVERS… concrete pavers in 3 sizes… 537 of them!  It took us 2 trips to haul them all in our van but the giver was generous and didn’t mind!  How nice of him… over $600 of perfect condition pavers can now be used to build paths and edge flower beds front and back!  Yipeee!  Perfect for the sandy dirt here and the running St. Augustine grass that has to be weedeated to stay at bay!

Once put together this gorgeous fountain makes the most lovely sound… the top is supposed to be for a flower the giver said… but he said the dirt falls down into the water if you do… not sure what we will do with that top area… but I bet my honey will figure it out 🙂

We have had a really good experience with Craigslist finds but we have learned over the last couple years how to LOOK better before we jump and call or run out on a curb alert across town to waste gas and find the item gone 😦  But those are the exceptions.  We have found free 2 X 4’s … and recently scored here on a great cabinet that is ALL WOOD for the garage!  And it had some local history to it as well so even cooler!

Through all that I have been working on my 2nd table topper… this is my progress thus far 🙂

Just the center piece is done but it is going so much better now that I have an idea of the pattern AND what I am doing! lol  Read about my adventures and the finished product of the first one here!

I did change the thread I used on this one … and I want YOU to have a spool of my fave thread of the too!

You see… I am having to wax the color thread I have that is the right color… I only use ALL cotton thread when sewing… I figured if I love the YLI 40 wt thread… hand stitching with the Coats & Clark machine sewing thread that is 30 wt would be EASY too!  WRONG… the C & C is flimsy and knots… so time to try something I have never done but only heard of and WAX MY THREAD…

Just slide it through the slot into the wax and s-l-o-w-l-y run the piece through then thread and away you go… or so I had heard… guess what!  That is how it does work!  I haven’t had ANY problems since I started the waxing but the thread just isn’t the same… so in straightening I found an extra roll of:

YLI WHITE 40 wt hand quilting thread for you to win!

To win this thread… I will ship to wherever you are… on this cute wooden spool… from RED ROCK THREADS…. you must:

1. Be a follower via email or google or bloglovin to my blog (if you are already a follower leave 2 comments for 2 entries)
2. Leave a comment on this blog post of what you want to see more of in my blog
3. Explain a project you have that this thread might work for you on :)… but this last one isn’t necessary… I am just interested 🙂

That is it!  So get in your entries and look forward to hearing from you…

This giveaway will happen via random number generator if entries are over 20 and random draw out of a hat if less than 20 on Friday, November 22 at 8 am!  I can catch the mail if I can get ahold of you so make sure you leave me a way to contact you if you are anonymous or a no reply blogger… if I can’t reach you I will do a second drawing from the remaining entries and you will have lost out 😦

Hope you play along.. you will LOVE this thread!

Have a blessed week 🙂

Kathi

Learning to hand piece …

is many things but so far Zen is NOT it! lol

I do love it but just differently..

Definitely better than my machine work…

Doesn’t bother the local noises I love to listen to… water feature bubbling, birds, squirrels… my dogs! lol

So I started this adventure on November 3.

Fabrics from her ETSY shop here

Pattern in hand…

I cut all the material to the template size as I didn’t have the special rulers they recommended…  there was a vid but all the tips they gave were for MACHINE piecing… so I called on my best Connie to help me out…

Then I called on the internet when she was sleeping or working to help me out… HGTV has a great 3 part vid of Jinny Beyer “hand quilting” but she is actually piecing… the link isn’t working but you can just go to their website and search for it… sorry!  But it is EASY to find 🙂  And worth the effort if you want a quick and dirty lesson on hand piecing from a real PRO!

Finally between Connie, Jinny and my true grit effort I finished with this beauty of a table topper!  For 6 days of work this is sure like giving birth! lol

 To get to this point I had to glorify in little victories…

Like here… happy with my first stitches 🙂

Happy with my first units…

Going from my beginning triangle unit back to an octagon shaped center…

Back to a triangle…  This was Thursday I think…

Then it became a job… the sides to go on next didn’t fit when I tried… see???!!!

So I stretched one side, gathered the other some and sewed them together so they DID match! lol  If it seems wrong… it probably is…

So out came the scissors and some stitches had to go… time to start this part OVER!

Finally I got to iron the whole thing a take a pic… and because I am so excited you get to see it biggie sized now 🙂  It measures 18 1/2″ x 22 1/2″ 🙂

Ta daaaah!  Whoop!  One top done… now one more to go… I will adjust the pattern for the second one and know where MY problems were with the first one…

What i have learned… don’t leave knots at the corners.. instead backstitch to where you wanna be… less bulk at the corners… I can tell a difference at the point I learned that!

Use good sturdy thread and a sturdy needle you trust… I like it and Jinny said so! lol

Don’t iron until your pieced area is complete.. it will mess up the seams you need to be flipping.. and it will!

Try it then do more research and then go back to it again.. you will be much wiser the second or third time than you are the first… unless Jinny stops by your house! lol

Take time to stretch and be healthy so you can keep going when the road is rough or you aren’t seeing the progress you would like.  Be GOOD to yourself!

Hope this has helped you some if you struggle or desire to learn hand piecing.

I am still a lover of hand quilting overall and look forward to getting a few things I ordered to make the second one a tad easier… will share soon!

Have a blessed weekend!

Linking this learning lesson to …
Kathy’s Slow Stitching Sundays here 
Sugar Bee Crafts here 
Quilt Story here 
My Quilt Infatuation here

And check out my YLI hand quilting thread giveaway that I used in this project and LOVE going on until November 22, 2013 at 8 am EST… here!

Kathi

Decisions…. Decisions :)

So many decisions to make recently… but slowly I am making my way through this quilt and through all the decisions too…. some of the decisions were about this quilt…

Does it need even more quilting when I look at this pic???

And when I look at the back it just doesn’t look quilty enough 🙂  Sooo, at my bestie’s, Connie, urging I set out to design something for this odd space… slanted on one side and straight on the other… hmmm…

So “auditioned a couple here…

The bottom row has 4 zig zag style lines and the top has only 3… but it matches the 3 diagonal lines right next to it!  Instant winner in my book… so when it doubt…. again .. quilt it out 😀

what the final blocks will all look like 🙂

Next up I got this delicious fabric to learn hand piecing with…

using this pattern 🙂

Now to get up the courage to cut this beautiful fabric and make no major faux paux 🙂 lol

Another decision made was to storm coat the front and back doors with bright white semigloss paint… currently they are a light mushroomy gray color…

Wait until the after shot of this area 🙂  I am exciting at what skill my honey has is working magic 🙂

Got any recent decisions you have made that you would like to share ??? Would love feedback on what you are up to as well!

Have a blessed weekend!

Kathi