Over The Hump

It is Wednesday night of the last week of the second term and a lovely sense of calmness has descended upon me. The shortest day (but not the coldest, which is usually about 6 weeks after the shortest) has come and gone, the reports are done and I finished some other paperwork deadlines today at work (tedious marking and self evaluations and all that stuff) and written my piece for the next club newsletter. There are only 2 more days of term and we are halfway through the year! Over the hump! Holiday time! Yipee!

I'm going shopping on Saturday, using Janice's quilting machine on Sunday, taking my Thai homestay to the airport on Monday, Club day on the next Saturday, committee meeting Tuesday after that, picking up new homestay from Vietnam (well he's from Vietnam, I'm picking him up from the airport), working on the raffle quilt, using Janice's quilting machine, working on a quilt for a challenge, sewing curtains for the laundry, using Janice's quilting machine, finishing the attic window community quilt (which only needs the binding hand sewn), catching up on reading and commenting on blogs, using Janice's quilting machine, planning next term's work clean the house, tidying the sewing area, using Janice's quilting machine - all in two weeks. Did I say a sense of calmness had descended?


Another view of that wonderful walking foot:

Look What I've Got!

My very friendly sewing machine mechanic found this to fit my 1963 Singer 201:
It's a walking foot! Who would have thought that a walking foot was available to fit a machine this old!! I certainly didn't but it works a treat and has made my quilting life a whole lot easier - thanks Hugh! You know my Elna died and I haven't got it fixed yet. In between deciding what to do about it the place where I was going to send it closed and all Elna business in New Zealand has been taken over by Janome. The Elna machines have been produced by the Janome factory for a long time but the businesses were still separate. At least know when I decide I can afford to get it fixed I can take into my local Janome shop and they will send it away!! In the meantime I can sew a seam, quilt with a walking foot and free-motion quilt. No fancy stitches though! A friend has loaned me her spare machine so at least I can do zigzag on that.

Sewing wise I haven't done much after the coffee moment of last week, except I have finished sewing the vine onto the second border of the raffle quilt for Cotton On Quilters. Frances finished the second corner block. Progress photos are here.

A Coffee Moment I DIDN'T Need!

What a day!

I spilt coffee over my form class' school reports today. Eek, a swear word did leave my lips, but not the really bad one. Our students take 7 subjects, each one has a report on half an A4 sized sheet of paper, plus a cover sheet. I was sorting and reading through 25 students worth of them when my elbow knocked my coffee over. Well, I mean I didn't ASK my elbow to do it did I? Nothing for it but to type up a note to attach to them (apologising and asking for them to be reprinted) and put them back in the other teachers' pigeon holes. We did manage to save a large portion of them but there are about 70 to be reprinted. So I won't be flavour of the month but at least they are done on the computer and not hand-written. And why did Helen have coffee near her reports? I hear you ask. 'Cos it was my non-contact period and I had duty in the next break. A gal needs her caffeine fix!

On a quilty note I have been working on our club's raffle quilt. We are doing "Passing Fancy" by Kim Deihl from her book Simple Traditions (used with permission). I have hand appliqued the vine and stems on one side border and this is what it looks like (the colour isn't good):

Flowers, leaves and berries need to be added (and 3 more to be done). Frances has done one of the corner blocks and you can see this on our club blog here. I have done part of another corner block but Frances has taken it away to finish the leaves and berries for me. Progress is being made.

Quilting In The Country (again!)

On Saturday I went out to Janice's to learn how to load the 3 layers of a quilt on her Swiftquilter frame. I had a ball and only made a bird's nest once from forgetting to put the presser foot down. You can see a picture of me fixing it here. (I won't tell you how many needles I broke - suffice to say I owe Janice a new packet!) Janice wasn't feeling the greatest and pottered about working on her raffle quilt blocks.

I used a quilt top I had pieced from a whole lot of 2 1/2" squares I had cut out, years ago, of furnishing fabric samples and off cuts. These squares were intended to make a colour wash jacket and I had most of them pinned out on a huge piece of newsprint. It was one of the many things I never got finished. I had pulled them off the paper and had sewn them together in random (not colourwash) pairs. There they sat. With our club doing the Community Quilts project I pulled them out a couple of months ago and sewed them into 16 patch units. I finally got them together in an attic window setting. Not the greatest quilt in the world (in fact I think it is pretty ugly) but perfect for practicing some meander quilting:

Janice tells me I had the backing rolled the wrong way around, but it didn't seem to cause too many problems. I managed the edge quilting better than last time. I didn't quite get the whole lot finished in one day so out I went again on Sunday to finish it off.

The last run:
The Juki (back view):

Pulling the quilt off the rails (what a great feeling):

The back:

And the coffee was great!

A friend is someone who lets you quilt 2 quilts on her brand new equipment when she has done only one! At the end of the month Janice is going away for 5 weeks and has given me a key to her quilting studio! Coincidentally I have 2 weeks holiday starting the day after she and Terry leave. I can go out and practice machine quilting to my heart's content. Thank you, Janice.

"You've Come A Long Way Baby"

I have been thinking about how I got started quilting. I have been patchworking and quilting in some form or other since I was in my teens. My first effort was a 'quilt' made from left over dressmaking fabrics. My sister and I used to sew all our own clothes in those days. I cut 8 inch squares from mostly brown, burgundy and blue suiting weight fabric (of plains, stripes and checks - plaids to the USA) and sewed them altogether with a 5/8" seam. There was no pattern. It was huge, heavy and never got any further than the "flimsy" stage. But I remember being very proud of myself that I had made it so big and I can remember listening to Simon & Garfunkle's Sounds of Silence on the radio when I was sewing it. I don't know what happened to it. I guess in the end my mother threw it out. Sadly I have no picture of it.

The first time I used "proper" purchased fabric was when I was 18 or 19. I decided to make a cushion cover from these wonderful fabrics. I had no pattern but decided to make up one myself. It too never got past the flimsy stage, but I kept this one (maybe 'cos it was little?) and here it is.

the front (great original pattern huh?):

the back (don't you love those pressed-open 1/2" seams):

and a closeup detail of why adding a seam allowance all around is important (I knew it needed to be added and I did on the horizontal and vertical seams but I forgot about the diagonals of the triangles:


The fabrics coordinate really well don't you think? (One great shade of blue!!) They were purchased when specialty quilting fabric first began to be generally available in New Zealand (I'm talking around 1974/75.) At least I had some idea of light and dark, although not totally successfully because the 4 corner blocks are all the same construction with one half-square triangle and 2 quarter-square triangles. The last picture is closer to the real colour.

Community Quilts Stacked!

It was Community quilt hand-in day at club last Saturday. We got 52 quilts for distribution, which is an awesome effort. To see the quilts displayed around at the meeting visit our Cotton On Quilters blog here. You can also see the Show & Tell photos.

This is what 52 community Quilts look like stacked up on a bed. Don't they look great!

Today is a public holiday, Queen's Birthday (although it is not the Queen's actual birthday - very good of her to give us a day off though). I am having a sewing day at my house with some good friends. Which is great 'cos it made me do some tidying (how long will that last?). Janice has just arrived so I'm off to have some fun.

The Pin Container . . .

Well, here it is. It really isn't much to look at but I love it. It is round, which makes putting the lid on easier. It has that little pin cushion on the lid, which gives me somewhere to put the hand sewing needles. It is just the right size to fit next to my machine (that's the one that isn't going, by the way, and which I haven't yet made a decision about). The lid is indented and to replace the crumbling foam rubber that was originally there I cut a circle of card the right size and a circle of fabric bigger and ran a gathering thread around the fabric. I stuffed it with a scrap of batting, gathered the fabric around the card, tied it off and glued it in place.

It will probably shatter apart if I drop it on something hard because that hard plastic gets brittle with age. Perhaps I should be hunting the second hand shops for another one?? I don't think I've seen this type of container in the shops for a long time. Okay, that does make me sound sad, doesn't it?

It is a bit bereft of pins at the moment. I have some new ones to put in, somewhere . .

I'm Done Cutting!

I've finished the cutting. The piles at the top are for the flower applique. The cream piles in the middle are for the blocks, with background fabric placed on top of each pile. The skinny pile to the right is for the berries and the green pile at the bottom is for the leaves. I am tired!

I will post a picture of my little pin container tomorrow since some of you are interested. I need to wait for the camera batteries to recharge!

In reply to Tanya, my organisational skills are wafting their way to you via the ether, right now!

More Cutting, cutting . . .

This is the progress on cutting for the raffle quilt:

How do you like my organisational skills? Or am I just 'anal' as my friend Jo would say? She says I am "that adjective" about my pins. I like my sewing pins to be all the same, the long and thin type (but not the quilting pins with yellow or white or flower heads) and I like them to be in their little round plastic container which has a little pin cushion on the lid, with NO OTHER OBJECTS in it, like stray needles or safety pins!! If they are bent they get biffed. The little plastic container is one I have had for a long time, at least 30 years. It used to have a foam rubber pin cushion of the lid but this has long disintegrated and I made a new little cloth and batting one and glued it to the lid. I'm gonna cry when it dies!

Cutting, cutting . . . and a little hand sewing

I am in charge of the construction of our club's next raffle quilt for our biennial exhibition in April of next year. We are making a quilt designed by Kim Diehl from her book Simple Traditions (used with permission.) I decided I would make up little packets of fabric, already cut, for people to take away and make into the blocks and to prepare some applique shapes for the border. Since I work much better to deadlines I decided I would have these packets ready for our next club meeting which is this coming Saturday. This is a really great idea (I thought), especially if a quilt is using a limited number of fabrics. But this one is a scrappy style of 100 plus blocks, each block has 25 pieces cut from 2 fabrics plus the background, and we are making no more than 2 blocks with the same fabric. Slows things down somewhat! I have done 20 of them, I will get there, I will get there, I will get there . . .

While I watched Close Up after dinner I did hand sew one side of binding down on the community quilt I quilted using Janice's Juki and Swiftquilter frame. 3 sides down and one to go. Then I was a good girl and started the cutting. So I can feel virtuous, but I'm sorry, no photo today.

One Sick Puppy

My Elna is really sick.This is what it says when I turn it on (along with a really horrible noise that lasts for 5 seconds before the error message comes up):

I kind of feel pleased that it is such an important error, being #1 and all, but I am not happy that to fix it might cost $625 for the part plus labour plus freight if it is the circuit board. The better scenario is that it is the stepper motor which will cost $145 plus labour plus freight. And we all know how expensive labour is. The machine is only 5 years old and cost $1900 new. I don't feel like spending almost half its value again to fix it. To find out which one it is I have to spend the freight and labour anyway. At first the fault was intermittent but now it appears that it has succumbed full time to this debilitating illness. At least I can sew a straight seam with my trusty Singer. What is a girl to do with such a sick pup?

The Dragonfly Has Landed

I got it finished!
(wahoo, it is NOT another UFO!)

Standing up to Quilt

Another perfect day in the country was had by me today. I went out to Janice's house to do some quilting on a community quilt and I was allowed to use her new Juki on the Swiftquilter frame! Boy oh boy was that fun! Janice sneakily took photos of me. She probably will put them on her blog sometime soon, so look here to see if they are up.

I had already pin-basted the quilt and I thought I was just going to free motion using her Juki on the sewing table. In my ignorance I hadn't realised that you could put an already basted quilt on the frame. So after a few false starts (including forgetting to put the presser foot down - 3! times) I was away (and I won't mention the fact that I quilted the top edge of the quilt to the leader fabric.) I wasn't too good at doing the sides so after a couple of winds of the quilt I gave up on that and just quilted the top and bottom border and the centre. I'll finish the side borders on my Singer. Actually now that I think about it we put the quilt on sideways so it is the top and bottom borders that didn't get done.

It took a while to get used to the somewhat limited quilting space. I kept reaching the limit of forwards/backwards movement and ended up with a definite line going across, but hey, not bad for a first attempt (moving the machine a little helped increase the available space and I got better at not doing it as I went along.)

I could really get used to this!


This quilt was pieced by Rosie from the pattern I taught at our half-nighter last year. It is the second one she had made and she decided she didn't want to quilt it so she donated it to our club's community quilts project.

I haven't quite finished the dragonfly wall hanging but all I have to do now is put the eyes on and sew the body to to the quilt. I might get more than one post done this week!

Intermittent Fault

I know I promised you I would finish my dragonfly quilt and get a picture posted for you, but my Elna was sick again yesterday. I got the binding sewn on 2 sides on Saturday night. When I went to sew the other 2 sides on last night my machine made the same funny noise and tried to push the needle as far left as it would go before coming up with "error #1" on the screen. Ggggrrrrrrr!! An intermittent fault. The worst kind because they only happen when the mechanic is not around to see it. And guess what? I tried my machine tonight and it turned on perfectly well and behaved itself, of course!

So the quilt is still "in progress". I got the remaining 2 bindings sewn on tonight. Now I need to hand stitch the binding down, sew the paua pieces down the tail and the eyes onto the body, then finish off the ends of the antennae, then attach the body to the quilt. Since it is now way past when I should be going to bed before a work day I won't be finishing it tonight. I have 50 odd school reports to write before Friday so the progress won't be hotting up any time soon this week. Here is a detail piccy for you:

Dragonflies On The Wing

Today our club hosted a workshop by Jacqui Karl making a dragonfly wall hanging. Mine isn't quite finished - but it is not far off (I promise!) I have to sew on the binding and stitch the dragonfly to the background and attach small pieces of paua shell to the tail pieces and take a picture of it. Since I haven't blogged for a week I thought I would make you my priority tonight, vbg! (Actually I forgot to recharge my camera batteries so I only got a few pictures. The batteries are charging as "we speak" and I'm promising myself I will finish it tomorrow and get a picture posted.)

We used Angelina fibres , which most of us had not used before, for the wings and the tail. We stitched nappy liners onto the background of the quilt, used a hot gun to melt parts of it and then used Jacquard Luminere paints on the crispy edges. It was great fun. We had such a relaxing day that Colleen stitched her set of class notes to the back of her quilt and Rae stitched her non slip mat to hers!

Here is Colleen showing us how well she can stitch:

She was heard to say aloud she was wondering why her thread was breaking! More photos of the workshop can be seen on our club blog here.

Tote & Gloat

Had a great day today at Tote & Gloat and I am really tired now. Both Frances and I won a spot prize. This is mine, a fat quarter of fabric. The fabric is called Folk Art Cats by The Primitive Trimmer from Red Rooster Fabrics. I haven't seen this fabric before or heard of the designer, but I love the funky cats.

And this what I got at the merchant mall:

Clockwise from left, some fat quarters from Susan Claire at Toad Hall, a dinky key ring with a 2 inch square ruler from Cherry Pie quilt Patch, a pack of hand dyed 10 inch squares from Parklee, a one metre piece of batik also (I think) from Parklee, a bag of silk and satin scraps for crazy patchwork, from Cherry Pie and in the middle 2 one metre pieces fo fabric from Susan Claire and in the cellophane packet a pair of wee scissors with a pull-off guard. The blades are only 1 and 1/4 inches long and they cut right to the tips. Very cute. I can't remember which stall had the scissors.

The crowd was entertained at the start by two "quilt doctors" performing an autopsy on a 'recently deceased quilter' to see what had caused her 'demise'. Was it the badly sewn bits of fabrics thrown away or the the orphan blocks choking her system, or was it bulging fabric and batting stash or the 'badly digested' NZ Quilter magazine?



The funniest part was when one of the "doctors" had to have a wee operation herself:



Can you guess what 'operation she needed?

Short Post

Just logging in to say hello. Frances, Janice, Jo and I are off to Tote & Gloat in Palmerston North tomorrow. This is run by Rose City Quilters and is like a big regional show & tell, with a guest speaker and merchant malls. There is a new sewing machine to be one*. I wonder if tomorrow will be my lucky day?? I might have a photo or two to post.

Update: oops, I mean won! (and no I didn't)

My "Baby" is Back! (and other things)

Wouldn't you know it. My Elna gets to our friendly sewing machine mechanic and it GOES! Can you believe it? Didn't need to be sent away, didn't cost me any money and, darn it, I have no justification for buying a new Juki sewing machine with a Swiftquilter frame! (Not that I have the room to have one in the first place you understand.)
Thank you, every one, for your commiserations at the thought of having no sewing machine. I forgot to say that I do have another machine, a 1963 Singer 201. This is a great little machine that sews just a straight stitch, but stitches a much better seam than my Elna. I use it mostly for free motion machine quilting (when I actually have something to quilt, which doesn't seem to be as often as I would like - my machine quilting skills keep getting rusty.)

I only bought it for the table it is in and it didn't go when it arrived home. My friendly machine mechanic was around at my place one day, returning my Elna after a regular check up, and I proudly showed him my table (and the machine in it which I hadn't given much thought to, I thought it was going to be too awkward to get the table with the machine in it to him to have a look at.) Hugh very quickly unclipped it from the table and took it away! I was amazed. I never thought about the machine unclipping from the table (well, doh!). It was just seized up from lack of use and needed gentle coaxing and lots of lubrication to make it a very useful addition to my sewing room. Hugh found me a free motion foot* to fit and "Bob's your uncle"! It has twice as much space under the arm as my Elna and the only thing I really miss on it is needle up/needle down.

Speaking of sewing rooms and quilting machines, Frances, Donna and I went out to my friend Janice's place on Sunday to help her reorganise her sewing space so she can fit her new Juki machine and Swiftquilter frame into the space. The four of us pulled everything out, cleaned all the walls (and cobwebs) and put everything back in the position Janice wanted it. Janice has now finished tidying and you can see some great pictures here. I am (still) green. As our reward Janice cooked a very yummy lunch of smoked salmon omelette and salad. We had a wonderful day.



*actually I broke the first one, but Hugh found me another, much better one. Isn't he great?

No Photos, No Sewing Machine and ...

... no posts for a week. I am a slack blogger. No posts 'cos I have been busy this week and didn't have time. No photos for the same reason! And no sewing machine because it is sick and has to go the the machine doctor in Auckland! I turned on my elna last night and it went crazy trying to push the needle as far left as it could go and then came up with a message on the screen "Error #1". Look in the manual. There is no reference to Error #1 in the manual. Frances offers to take said machine to our lovely machine mechanic who just happens to live across the road from her and is a good friend. Rang him up tonight to find it is probably an electronic circuitry problem and will have to be sent to away to be fixed. I have asked him top find out about how much it will cost to get fixed before he sends it away because, of course, it is out of it's warranty period. Aaarrggh!

Sewing in the wrong direction

Yes, well, despite all of yesterday's drama it was easy compared to today. Intensive machine quilting is something I need to be doing every day, so I can get good at it!! Today I was mostly doing the reverse stuff! And there is more reverse stuff to do before I can put it back under the machine. Prime Suspect is starting soon on the telly so I had better find my quick-unpick.