Scrappy Saturday - Big Reveal

It has been such a busy week in the middle of Fall Fair season. In spite of all the busyness, I have a big Rainbow Scrap Challenge reveal to share with you!
I have been sewing a few Maverick star blocks here and there since April of 2014. That's 5 and a half years of collecting little pieces for these scrappy 6" blocks! These blocks have seen a lot of my life and hold so many memories.

This is my Sweet Baby Jayne 1964 Singer Featherweight sewing all my stars into a quilt top. There were a lot of seams to match and many pins were used in the top construction. But I was surprised at how well it came together considering the blocks were made on many different sewing machines over several years. 
And then it was time for the big reveal. I hung the quilt on the clothesline at my friend Deanna's house for the photo shoot. 

Do you see my friend Barb's whale block also hanging on the clothesline to the left of the stars?!? It makes me smile that the whale looks so small swimming beside the stars!

I'm not going to share all the secrets about the lengths to which a crazy blogger would go in order to get some good quilt photos from the right angle, but let's just say a ladder was involved! And bless their hearts, Deanna and Ted never rolled their eyes or talked about me being crazy (in front of me anyway!) when I asked if I could borrow their ladder to climb up to the shed roof!! LOL

I wanted to take a photo with the quilt by some of my favourite birch trees that are dying and will have to be taken down. But I couldn't get far enough away from the quilt to get a full angle shot. So I climbed a ladder on the other side of the shed to get a shot from over the roof. And then when the wind picked up,  Deanna tried to hold the corner of the quilt to keep it still. I love this action shot and it still makes me smile!

I couldn't really think about ending the Maverick stars project until I had another scrappy leader-ender project that would use up all the small scraps in my quilting room.  And now I have that focus thanks to Bonnie Hunter's Shoo Fly Shoo challenge. Here are the latest blocks made last night. The RSC colour for September is purple and I don't seem to have many purple scraps laying around, so I'll have to dig deep!
Hop over to the RSC link up to see more scrappy projects.

Design Wall Monday

Last week I set up Elsie, one of my vintage sewing machines to give her a workout and do some power sewing on pieces for Kevin's summer mystery. 
There are hundreds of pieces to be sewn for this quilt, and the leader/ender style wasn't making fast enough progress for me. So I oiled her generously and found the quarter inch seam line using Bonnie Hunter's seam guide tool.

She worked beautifully, making a perfect stitch for hours. Don't you love how the fabric looks like ribbon candy coming out behind the needle when you sew long strip sets?

Eventually I was bored of working with neutrals and needed to work with the bright colours for a while. And then suddenly for no apparent reason, the thread snapped and it was hard to thread the needle again (old eyes). So I got the brilliant idea to change the needle, and when I did that, the machine stopped making stitches at all.
Everything was threaded properly but it was as if there was no thread. I reread the manual for the umpteenth time. In my own defence, I have a lot of machines and have read a lot of manuals so I can't remember all the details for each machine (yet). As it turns out, the issue was incorrect needle placement. In this machine the smooth side of the needle in the shank must face the back of the Featherweight 221K. I hope I remember this!

In spite of this  technical glitch, I was able to finish over half of the required blocks for step #1 and #2, and have the remaining parts cut and ready to finish in plenty of time for the next step at the end of August. Here are 40 blocks on the design wall to get a sense of how it's looking.
To see more design wall posts, hop over to Small Quilts.

PS... the winner of the Olfa prize package from last Monday's Happy Little Things post was commenter # 122 (out of 228 comments). Congratulations to Diana from Texas!
It was inspiring reading what makes my blog readers happy....thanks for entering!

Scrap Dance Minuet Quilt Top

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day! 
I'm late posting today because the Canada Day parade was at 10 am this morning. Parades must take precedence over blogs!

The Scrap Dance Minuet quilt along is over but I'm still putzing along here. We've been sewing one step each month, which is the perfect pace for a leisurely mystery waltz quilt! 

sewing mystery blocks on white Singer Featherweight 221K

Here is a very yellowy photo my quilt top after the addition of the first border. 

Border #1

I wanted to extend a few of  the flying geese into the border and I like how that turned out. But then I ran out of the white fabric, so now I'm wondering about whether to add more borders or call it finished? 

These old yucky floral fabrics have found new life in this quilt. It does look prettier in real life than in this photo, and will make a wonderful donation quilt. It's amazing that I was able to make a "silk purse from a sow's ear"! 

Thanks to Carole for the inspiration to use up these old fabrics, for the great pattern, and for hosting this fun sew along!

Linking up to Design Wall Monday over at Judy's.

Elsie 221 Featherweight

Since posting about my new (to me) old vintage machine, and receiving some email questions about her, I realized I needed to write a whole post about this lovely machine.

Elsie 221

It has been sitting used for many years. You can see that there is residue from a piece of tape that was stuck on the machine, likely as a seam allowance guide. Even after a lot of elbow grease, I was unable to get it all off, but it's better than it was.

Vintage Singer Needles

I was gifted this machine by someone I didn't know very well, but she knew I was a quilter and wanted to give her special sewing machine to me. I know the value of this gift and was reluctant to accept it for a while. It had been sitting in her closet for a long time, and then it sat in my closet for a long time, while I slowly came around to accepting this generous gift. Elsie joins my sewing machine collection (otherwise known as "the herd") as machine #17 - you can read about the others here.

Using the Singer Featherweight webpage on dating machines, I discovered that this machine with serial number EG642139 was born on May 16, 1951 which makes her 67 years old!



One of the very special things about this machine is because she was born in 1951, which was Singer's centennial year, it has a special badge that says "A century of sewing service" on the blue oval edge of the badge.

wrong position

After dismantling, cleaning, oiling and checking all the working parts, I couldn't get it sewing properly. But I had forgotten one important feature of Featherweight machines. 
Okay... see how the "positioning finger" is at the 9 o'clock position? 

right position

It must be at the 12 o'clock position. After removing the faceplate and cleaning the years of gunk under there, I had not repositioned it correctly. 
That problem had me stumped for a while, but once I solved that problem, it sewed perfectly. The tension was exact and she may now be my new favourite machine!

This is the box of accessories that came with her. Only one of these bobbins is for the 221 machine (the top left one) so I'm not sure what machine the other bobbins are for.


And sew... as soon as I'm done work, I'll be in the sewing room with Elsie to start sewing the last step of Good Fortune. Bonnie surprised the quilting world with posting the mystery design reveal this morning. Can't wait to put some blocks together to see how my version of the quilt will look!

Design Wall Monday

Am I crazy to have 2 mystery quilts on the go at this busy time of the year?!? 
Don't answer that!
First up is the Temecula Secret Santa mystery. The final step was posted on Friday and I am not even close to finishing my blocks. I am sewing these blocks on my 221K White Featherweight. Everything is more fun to sew on this lovely machine, and although she is 53 years old, she still sews like a dream! 



This has been such a great project to work on and I'm really happy with how my fabric choices are working out. It's a labour intensive undertaking since here are a lot of pieces in these blocks - 97 pieces to be exact! 
Here are my first 3 blocks on the design wall. I just need to sew 9 more of these and figure out the sashing. Sharon told me that this block pattern is called Burgoyne Surrounded, so I looked it up. Yes indeed, that is what we are making! 
Tomorrow I'll update the Quiltville mystery that I've also started working on.
Hop over to Small Quilts to see more design wall posting.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge - Squared Away

October was the last month for making sampler blocks for the Squared Away project. November is for figuring out the layout, and December will be finishing the quilt (a very optimistic plan!)
I made my month #10 blocks (call "Dewey Dream") in dark green. One of my favourite parts of sewing scrap blocks is finding light and dark scraps that play well together. These blocks are some of my favourite mixes.

The last colour to be added to my project is brown. It just seemed to need the warmth that brown brings. I sewed these last block sets on my white Featherweight 221K sewing machine. 

For my last blocks I used the bonus block pattern called Rolling 9 Patch. Instead of using squares as the pattern shows, I used rectangles and sewed them together using a partial seam. It's a fun block addition to the sampler.

I am so happy to have finished all my Squared Away blocks!

And here are all the blocks on the design wall.
This it the orderly straight set layout that would measure approximately 21" x 55". That's a weird size for a quilt so that won't be my choice





Here is a straight set having 5 blocks across and the colours layed out kind of diagonal. It would measure about 27" x 43".

This is what the blocks look like on point which would measure approximately 38" square. It might be fun to make more blocks next year to add as borders for this layout.

To see what other scrap quilters are making today, hop over to the weekly link up.

Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching celebration! 
This is a special weekend because it's Father's day and also my birthday. I'll be taking my Dad out for a special lunch today and remembering how blessed I am to have such a wonderful DAD!

At some point today I'll be enjoying some slow stitching time and conversation with Dad. In addition to visiting with his kids and grandkids (who adore him), Dad loves to spend time playing games, so I might need to put the stitching aside for a while!

Yesterday was also a day of celebrating - my friend Debby organized a sewing party for me with a mystery project, which was a bag with a measuring tape snap closure. Making 3D projects is a little challenging for me since my brain doesn't process the steps well, but I managed to keep up fairly well and am delighted with my finished product. 

Of course I made the  construction process a little longer by doing the quilting by hand. I can't help myself because I love it! You can maybe see that I quilted lines in all the seams, on some of the motifs in the fabric, and stitched a few diagonal lines for fun. It wasn't too difficult to hand quilt through the fusible batting.

When the quilting was done, I hand stitched a little pocket to the inside of the bag. So darn cute!

You can see my trusty little 1952 Featherweight machine was along and it did a lot of the work for me. But given a preference, I do like to do as much hand stitching as possible.



Here are the two sides of the bag... back and front. 


Many thanks to my friend Debby for organizing this special birthday party and making a lovely lunch for us, to her Mom Dorothy for sewing along while always keeping several steps ahead of us (and making sure we knew she was!) and to our wonderful teacher Deb Beirnes. Look at the pretty dessert she made for us!
So that was my fun birthday project, and in the time it took me to make one bag, both Debby and her Mom made two! That's what happens with hand stitching... you get to enjoy your project longer since it takes twice the time!

What you are hand stitching today? Link up your blog post below and share your slow progress with us.



   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

Retreat Report #2

This is the next update of retreat projects - new start #2. At last year's retreat my friend Gail gave me a Featherweight sewing machine fat quarter. I made a little mat for my Featherweights to sit on. They are very old and need a soft surface to sit on 😉



It's just the fabric piece folded over a piece of thin batting, some machine quilting in the open spaces, and a machine stitched edge.


So this year I brought my Featherweight mat and my 1952 Singer 221 named Charity. She really enjoyed starting a new project and trying out the new sewing mat. Her wiring is a little bit frail and crispy, but I got everything working well.

The new project was the Exploding block from Missouri Star Company. The full size quilt uses layer cakes, but I just wanted to try out the block using a Primitive Gatherings snowman charm pack. 

The charm pack made 14 blocks and 12 were used to make this little table mat. It was fun for a quick and easy project and all the points are cut off so there is nothing to worry about! I think I'll hand quilt this cute little project.

Here is the machine back in her case to sleep overnight. See how the mat rolls up nicely to fit in the top of the case? 

Stop by tomorrow for retreat update #3 featuring hand stitched projects.

Sewing and "The Crown"

I have been sewing my way through the Netflix series called "The Crown" while working on my blocks for the Magnolia Mystery.  I am sewing these blocks on my 1952 Singer Featherweight I have called "Charity". She sews like a dream and I am enjoying every stress relieving stitch.

To viewers who enjoyed season #1 of The Crown, I recommend not even bothering with most of season #2. John Lithgow, who was incredible as Winston Churchill, has gone away, and there are so many new nondescript characters that are not well explained. Most of the time I don't know what is going on, and need to rewatch parts of the episodes, then google historical facts so that I can figure it all out. That is not good storytelling when I cannot follow the plot!
Also, much of season #2 is about the sexual escapades and immoral behaviour of the prominent men and of Princess Margaret. The storytelling went from sublime in season #1 to terrible in season #2. 
How does that happen?!? 
I fast forwarded through some parts of the episodes that are not my "cup of tea", and got so annoyed that I started making sewing mistakes. 
That is not a good thing! Okay, where's the seam ripper, and what else can I watch on Netflix?
Any suggestions?

Magnolia Mystery Update

Progress is continuing on my Magnolia Mystery. It's slow, but it's certainly progress!

I got out my cute white Featherweight 221K called "Sweet Baby Jayne". It's such a joy to sew on this machine but I worry about wearing her out. However, I also do not want her to spend her whole life in a dark closet with no attention at all. So on special occasions, I treat myself to a sewing session.  Her stitch is lovely and her sound is soft and sweet.

There are 3 different block patterns to sew for this step of the mystery and I made a sample of each block. However I sewed one of the sample blocks incorrectly, so right from the start I was using the seam ripper. The correct blocks have the paper notes pinned on, and the wrong block is under the seam ripper. It has since been dismantled! All the block components needed to sew the required number of blocks are now ready to mass assemble. Progress should be much faster now...fingers crossed!

Emerald Stars Step #1

Scrap organization is an ongoing challenge for a busy quilter! I'm always tossing pieces here and there, and trying to figure out how to store scraps so they are actually useable for future projects. What good does it do to keep scraps if they don't actually become finished quilts?!?! 

Well, Kevin the Quilter is helping us out with that challenge! He is hosting a scrappy mystery project called "Sapphire Stars" (step #1 is here). There are lots of tips already posted for scrap organization. 
For this project I am using up green scraps, so my quilt will be called Emerald Stars. The dark corners were leftover from the sashing and backing on the bear quilt, the medium squares are some of my favourite green plaids, and the lights were from the green scrap bin. It's so great to be getting these scraps into a quilt ... thanks Kevin!



The 48 blocks for step #1 were sewn on my white Singer featherweight 221K.  I thought it was the perfect machine for sewing these green blocks since under some lighting the machine appears to have a slight tinge of green. Notice that I'm using up a bobbin of light green thread to piece these blocks. 
Ready for step #2!
Linking up to Oh Scrap!

Scrappy Saturday - Spools

While I had the large portable design wall up from last Friday, I thought I would take the opportunity to put all my spool blocks on the wall and see where the project is at. 

I have been making spool blocks since July 2013, and definitely have enough blocks to make a good size quilt. How many are there? 580 spools are in this layout so far! That's a lot of scraps!
I had planned on a totally scrappy layout, but then was drawn to try a rainbow layout, especially since this is a long time rainbow scrap challenge project!

"Charity"

I made the last four purple spool blocks for this quilt on my new/old Singer Featherweight. I got her working, and am so relieved she is not a boat anchor! She sews a very pretty stitch with good tension, and is a delight to sew on! I had to put a piece of tape down to mark the 1/4" seam. 
I am taking Swooze's suggestion made on a previous post and will call her "Charity". It seems like the perfect name for this machine considering how she came to join my herd.
To see what bloggers are sewing with their purple scraps today, hop over to SoScrappy.