She LLLIIIIIIVES!!!!

The machine is working well!  Here she is behaving very nicely.

I told somebody she was green.  She's not - she's gray.  I must be going color blind.

Here's some of the practicing I've done.

I like loopdiloops!

Here is my latest meandering.  

That's all I've got today.  Have some pics of the latest book for another day.  Gotta go get a few things done so I can get back to quilting!!

Another book

This one is for my neice (Jilly, if you are reading this, email me with your new address so I can send this to you!). She is very tactile, so every page has something to touch on it. I have a few little things I want to write in it and then it will be ready to go.
Elephants. Remember the Sesame Street song, "There's a Bird On Me?" I love that song! This page reminds me of that.

A goose and a shark. The goose is safe - the shark is swimming the other direction. Phew!

Kitties and a fancy frog. I love those kitties! I have a lot of them. I may get around to making a book of just kitties.

A boo-boo bear and a bunny. My lovely assistant loves her boo boo bear page, so I added one for cousin, too.

And a chicken. Chickens are just too cool. Have you ever noticed how many chickens there are on Sesame Street? Hmmmm....

Quilting machine update: the machine is home again! And it seems to be sewing much better. It still wants to break cotton thread, but the tension is good. I'm OK with poly thread. Today I did a lot of practicing with a cotton wrapped polyester and it didn't break at all! That felt good. I have a lot more practicing to do, but it sure is easier when I don't have to stop every 30 seconds to rethread the machine! I have several other threads to test, too. Maybe in a week or so I will be ready to do an actual quilt! I'll take some pics of my practice soon and post them.

Cool finds over the weekend

The quilting machine is back in the shop. It's either breaking the thread, or the tension is wwwaaaayyyyy off. The mechs are starting to say it's me (I don't think so) and I'm starting to think either they just can't figure it out or it's not fixable. This last guy gave me a warranty, so I'm gonna let him play around with it a while. I'm trying to get a hold of someone with the outfit that put the whole thing together, but they have recently gone out of business so that's something of a long shot. Not giving up yet, but extremely frustrated!!! Ack!!! I still think that this machine 'should' work well and I still think I can make that happen before I spend anywhere near what it would cost to buy a new machine. Just wish I could make that happen tomorrow....

In the meantime, found some really fun stuff this weekend while estate saling. Hit a bonanza sale!!!

This was all together in a bag marked 'tatting kit $25'. It was Sunday, which usually means 1/2 off and it was 10 min till they closed, so they gave it to me for $10. That's more than I would normally spend, but I enjoy tatting and the book is worth $10 so I bought it.

This basket is actually something we found a week or so ago at a garage sale. I spent more than I should have on it, too, but I'm a sucker for neat baskets and this one has a sewing machine on the lid (a lid!!) and that made it irresistable.

This was just too cool! All this was in a bag marked 'bobbin lace kit - $25'. Got it for $10, too. Gobs of bobbins, a little thread and an instruction book. Always wanted to learn how to do bobbin lace and now I can! In all my spare time. Ha!!


Something else I find fascinating - wooden spoons. Guess I should say, wooden utensils! I like ones that are an interesting shape or decorative. I have lots of these and love finding them. I rarely use them, but they just make my kitchen look and feel so homey. Got all these for $1. Someday I'll have to blog about the time I set my basket of wooden spoons on fire. It's a pretty good story complete with fire extinguisher, but not exciting enough to include the fire department.


Also got this basket overflowing with tatting thread.

This bag of wool and the spindle was $.50. That's half a dollar. Can you believe it? I haven't looked really closely at the wool or tried to work with it yet, but I think it's felted a little. I'm confident I can fine something cool to do with it if it won't spin or needle felt. Dolly hair, maybe...

And this is (I think) a cushion used for making the bobbin lace. It was $1 and came with lots and lots of pins, a couple of prickings (the patterns for making the bobbin lace - aren't you impressed that I know that?? Read it in the book.) and two bookmarks. For $1!!!!

We also bought a light box for $4. I've always wanted a light box, didn't want to go buy one or build one, so always used the window instead. The problem with that is my sewing room is in the basement. It has windows, but they are tiny and higher up than I can reach. I don't get to do much sewing during the day, so I just don't do things that require a light box. Now I can! Husband and art major son were also excited about the light box. They are just so handy for some things.

This sale was so much fun. The house looked tiny, but there just kept being rooms and rooms and roome.... BIG rooms! They must have built onto this house 3 times, each time building on a big project room. Awesome antiques and more crafting stuff than you could shake a stick at. Painting, sculpting, sewing - way too much fun! We were there on Sunday and I can't imagine what had been there before we came. Didn't find a sewing machine, though.

Just heard back from the guy who built my quilting machine. He gave me a little advice and said he'd work on it if I got desperate (I'm just about there....). Don't want to drive out there (probably a 4 hour drive), so he suggested I ship it to them. Hmmm... We'll see.

It works!!!

Well, after 3 sewing machine mechanics the machine finally works.  It still breaks thread, but I think as I practice and get used to the rhythm/speed it likes it will improve.  Getting the tension right helps.  The last guy guaranteed his work for 90 days, so if it isn't much better in a while I'll take it back.  Here are my first attempts:

Kinda fun, huh?  Looking forward to lots more practice.

And here are a few pics of my lovely assistant and a few of the other people that live in our house.   Little miss assistant has a new hair cut!  She has always had hair, but it hasn't really been 'pretty' hair.  My parents visited my sister over the holiday and brought back pics of my niece with a cute little haircut and I decided my little assistant needed one, too.

Clapping with big brother.

Sorry for the red eye!  Didn't have time to take it out.

With not so big brother.  More red eye!

Quilting machine update - don't get too excited

I'd like to be able to say that I've been so busy quilting I just haven't had time to blog. But, alas! Not so. I've been waiting to get the machine up and running so that I could blog about how cool it is and how much fun I'm having using it. Read on...

Here's the machine all cleaned up and ready to quilt. Note the practice materials loaded up and everything. Unfortunately, the machine insists on breaking my thread. Two sewing machine mechanics have been unable to resolve this difficulty. The first guy got it working except it kept throwing an occasional loop on the bottom. He said I just needed to get the tension right. Wrong!! I messed around with it till I had broken the tension, then called the second guy. He fixed the tension (replaced my take up spring - so that's how you adjust that thing.....), but now it breaks the thread really quick every time. The second guy assures me this is fixable and is not a machine killing issue, it just needs more time and attention than he had the day he came over. He promised to come back this week and fix it, but so far haven't heard from him. Tomorrow is still in 'this week' and it's before Turkey Day, so I've got my fingers crossed that he will show up tomorrow, fix my machine and I can spend the holiday quilting. Ya think?? Maybe when I grow up (and learn how to take apart a tension assembly properly...) I can become a sewing machine mechanic. Apparently, good ones are in high demand.

In the meantime, I bought a bobbin winder on ebay. Got a good deal, I think. The sewing machine place wanted $90, I got mine for $19. Bought a new tire for it (50 cents) and bobbins for the quilting machine, too, and have identified the things I want to quilt first after some initial practice. Sigh......

The good news is, have been playing around with the machine anyway with no thread and it's fun! It moves as nicely as the machines I've demo-ed and wanted to buy at quilt shows and I think with some practice I might be able to do some pretty good work. My husband hasn't said anything about moving it out yet, so that's good. Maybe after a few more months he'll be so used to seeing it there he'll forget he doesn't like it? Hmmmm...

I've also been in contact with 2 other quilters who have a machine just like this! Whoda thunk it? Both shared pics of their quilts with me and they are beautiful! And their machines work just fine, so surely mine will, too. Eventually. Till then I just get to be patient. Aaarrgghh!!!

You're not going to believe this, but.....

I bought a longarm quilting machine today. At a garage sale. For $200. It's old, it may need some work, and it's not especially long in the arm (10 inches), but it's mine! WOOHOOO!!!

So, the story:

We were doing our usual garage sale thing today. We hit a few down the road and then came back to our neighborhood to hit a few there before we came home. One of those sales was at the home of a neighbor who has lived here forever. She's a terrific lady who was very crafty. She's in the nursing home now and her daughter and son in law live in her house. They have had several garage sales of my neighbor's things and I have bought many things there - quilt tops, fabric, batting and batting and batting and batting.... I was a little disappointed today because there was no fabric there, no batting, just stuff. So we were browsing, looking at things, visiting with neighbors, had picked up a few things to buy, and started talking to the son in law about all the things they had sold and all the things they had left to sell. He mentioned there was a big quilting machine in the back. I asked if it was for sale and he said yes. Not sure if his idea of a big quilting machine and mine were the same, I asked if we could see it and he said yes. We went back to the shed and inside under boxes and chairs and who knows what else was a 12 foot quilting frame with a monster quilting machine on it! I have known this neighbor for over 10 years, been to her house many times, and did not know she owned a quilting machine. I think it's been in that shed since before I knew her. It's from the 80's, needs lots of cleaning and may not even work, but I figure the frame is probably worth $200. I was shocked they were asking so little for it! So we bought it.

Twelve feet is really long. I hadn't ever really thought about how long 12 feet is until today. It's 'really' long. And this frame isn't the easily disassembled kind. This house is only 3 blocks from mine, so we figured if we could just get a trailer we could get it home. We know another neighbor with a trailer, so we went home to ask. He wasn't home. While waiting for him to get home, husband and two sons went to unbury the machine and came home with the head. Took those guys to lunch and trailer neighbor still wasn't home. Ever the clever one, my husband decided we can get the table home with the wagon. Not a station wagon, a Radio Flyer. One end of the table goes on the wagon, he'll carry the other end while I pull. This didn't sound so great to me, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to try it. So we took off down the street with our wagon. It's really rattley when it's empty, so I rode in the wagon and he pulled me. When we got there we realized the wagon on the end would be fine, him carrying the other end wouldn't - it was just too heavy. He had almost brought some of the kids roller skates but hadn't. When we mentioned that to the neighbors they laughed, but also said that might work. They might be as crazy as we are.... They also mentioned that they had a wagon and maybe we could use that on the other end. So we did. Just imagine - a dumpy little woman in flip flops with a really good looking guy walking down your neighborhood street pulling/pushing a 12 foot quilting table on two Radio Flyer wagons. That would be us!

We live in the absolute best neighborhood on the planet. I know this is true because 3 neighbors stopped and asked if we needed help. The next question was, "What 'is' that?" And you know they love us because if they didn't they would have just driven right on by and pretended not to see the crazy couple with all those kids rolling down the street with whatever that monstrous thing is. So we can never move. Except now I have a 12 foot quilting frame in my living room because it's too big to get down to the basement where all my quilting things are! I thought I had a big living room until today. It's not nearly as big as I thought it was.... So we may need to move so we can house the quilting machine. Because I'm keeping it. Forever.

So, that's today's adventure. My mom is going to read this and think, "You can't afford to come see us in Branson but you can afford to spend $$$ on 'that'?" So anybody reading this who gets it, please comment that you are at least as crazy as me and would have done the same thing? Maybe not rolled it home on two wagons, but would have jumped at the chance to buy it? Please???

This is the table in my living room.

Ignore the mess, I'm pretending it's messy because we moved everything to get the machine in.

This is how far it sticks out farther than the couch. Yikes!!!




Here's the head.

This is the frame in my driveway on the wagons - are you laughing?

And one of the most wonderful man in the world. He has to be - who else would let his wife buy a 25+ year old monstrosity of a machine with precious $$$ and then wagon it down the street in front of everybody? And THEN nearly kill himself and oldest son getting it in the house? He must be the most wonderful man ever. Note the joy on his face.....I think it's really "What was I thinking when I let her do this?"

The cutest thing ever! Really!

Check this out! Teeny tiny cupcakes, ladybugs and stars on pins!!!

They are much cuter in person. I saw online someplace that someone had made some of these with shrinky dink stuff. When I started surfing to find the tutorial again, I couldn't find it. BUT!! I did find another tutorial about using other plastic to shrink, so I tried it and it worked! This tutorial (which I can't find either....) said that clear plastic with a recycling code '6' will shrink and that you can find it on deli type stuff. I found this on top of a rotisserie chicken from Walmart. Washed it, colored it with Sharpies, punched it out with craft punches (which was super hard, so had muscle bound son and husband do that part), stuck a pin through each one, stuck the pin into a potato, put the potato in the oven at 350 for about 30 sec (give or take.....) and presto! Wallah! Cutest pins ever!!! I hate pins. They're so much easier to use and less irritating if they are cute. It's hard to see the colors in the pic, but the silver did the best, I think. I might try paint pens next time. I gotta get some more craft punches...

And here are some monkey wrench blocks that followed me home from an estate sale this weekend. They are all hand pieced! There are some other ones, but I forgot to take pics of them. I'll try to remember to do that tomorrow.

And then there was 'this' beautiful thing that I found at the same sale. For $10!!! It has it's original warranty (lifetime!) that says it was purchased in 1962. And you know what? I don't think it's been sewn on more than a couple of times. It's clean as a whistle and runs buttery smooth. And it's the heaviest machine I've ever come across! Has all it's attachments. Does a zigzag. Even the bobbin tire is in good shape. I've been trying not to accumulate a bunch of machines, but I just couldn't resist this one. Big sister likes it cuz it's green. She's into green.

OH! The spider left. It rained the next day and I guess she didn't like the rain. Haven't seen her since. Which is a little scary.....

More scary spider pics!!

I know, it's a quilting blog. But this is just too cool! And spiders spin silk and weave webs and that's fiber/textile related, right?? The kids threw a wormy thing into the spider web and she ate it!! We looked it up and she is a she. Males are small (and there is NOTHING small about her!) and plain.

I'm pretty proud of this pic. I was about 2 feet away (which was way too close!) and the camera still got a pretty good focus. This is the beginning of the meal.


And this is quite a while later. Poor wormy thing!

She hung out on the porch all day. Tried to feed her a big cockroach this evening but she wasn't interested. I guess she's full! We'll see if she's still around in the morning. Her web got pretty messed up today, she's gonna need another one. We had all the neighbors over looking at her and showed everybody else we came across a video of her. We're pretty easily entertained.

A little sewing and a BIG early Halloween scare!

Here's a quickie quilt I made for our departing school secretary. She likes lady bugs so I dug through my stash and found about 6 different lady bug prints and whipped this up really quick.


The art teacher (who is so good to always help me out with surprise teacher quilts!) had all the kids sign it during art class. Now it's off to the longarm quilter.

*****WARNING******

The next several pics are REAL and SCARY! REAL SCARY!!! View at your own risk.

Our earliest bus rider raced out the door this morning to catch his bus and immediately yelled 'WHOA!' and raced back in the door. "Dad! You gotta come see this!" And here is what Dad saw:



This 'ginormous', as the bus rider put it, spider had put up a web across the steps on our front porch and the bus rider had run right through it! The funny thing is, one of our neighbors has constructed a rope web across their front lawn and we had just been talking about doing the same thing on our porch. Now we don't have to! This little monster (who is really NOT little at ALL!) has done it for us!



Here's a pic of him (her?) next to the Little Tikes chair and a pumpkin so you can get an idea of size. For a spider, he's HUGE!!! And he webbed up the whole darn porch. While I was taking pictures the sun was reflecting off all kinds of web strung all over the place. I must have looked really funny to the neighbors tiptoeing around the porch taking pictures of the concrete. I was scared to death to trip his web! There's no doubt he can outrun me. In fact, I'm not so sure that he can't eat me right up.

This is the best picture I could get of his back. We've seen his kind before. There was one on the neighbor's bush one day and I've seen others with webs stretched out over bushes. We've looked them up and they are simply 'garden' spiders. They make a zigzag in their webs, almost like a big zipper right in the middle. Cool, huh? I have NEVER seen one this big! I've never seen ANY spider this big! I bet his body is at least 3 inches long and those legs? I'm getting chills just thinking about how long those might be! I'm scared to kill him, cuz I think in a fight he'd win. If he's eating bugs I kinda want him to stay. It's really scaring looking at him, but I think it might be scarier if he leaves - then I won't know where he is!! What if he takes up residence under my bed??? My bedroom is just on the other side of the wall from the porch! Our mailbox is on the porch and I'm worried about the mailman. I'm thinking of putting up a sign - "Warning! Big spider!" - but I don't think he'd believe me! It is almost Halloween. I guess I'll just watch for him and head him off. The mailman can choose not to deliver your mail if you have a mean dog - wonder if he can cut me off cuz there's a monster spider on my porch? Maybe I should call the post office....

"B" is for book!

Still on the book kick.  They are just too much fun!  Here's the latest one.  But first, since blogger won't let me move the pics around.....

My lovely assistant being very helpful again!  I love it when she helps like this.

"B" is for book.  A book all about things that start with 'b'.  Here's a challenge for you - go see how many 'b' fabrics you have in your stash.  This book started to be a 'b' is for bunny book.  Then I decided to add bears.  Then bugs.  Oh!  And butterflies!  And it just grew.  I discovered a ridiculous number of 'b' things in my stash and even in my scrap tub.  It was astonishing!  The book is finished and I keep going back and writing more 'b' things that I find in it!  Like, the 'b'ow on the 'b'ear!

The boots got stitched on wrong side out.  Ever had one of those days?  I just didn't feel like ripping and re-stitching and you can see them just fine, so wrong side out they stayed.

The boy on the right has a ball, but it got lost in the seam allowance.  He was tough to cut out.  Do you love the 'b'lue 'b'amboo?  Can you believe that?  I pulled that out of the scrap tub as I was building these.  What a surprise!  The boots were like that, too.  Surprise!  Boots!!  But really, blue bamboo?  Who woulda thunk that would be in my scrap tub??  Not me.

This is a 'b'allerina with a 'b'ouquet and 'b'londe 'b'angs.  I mean really... did somebody plan this???

I like the bigger size.  It does allow for bigger pics, like the ballerina.  It's harder to build, though.  Pieces on the edges/corners tended to be really big.  That's OK if they are focus pieces, but just for fillers they kind of overwhelm, or at least I was afraid they would.  I guess I need to piece a bunch of crumbs together to use in spots like that.

I may take a book break for a bit.  I think I'm getting ready to do a memory/siggy quilt real quick.

More later!

Another funky book

This is what I did last night instead of watching the debate. It's not that I'm uninterested in the debate, just that I know I'll be hearing/reading about it everywhere and all the time until bigger news comes along. I'm sure of who I will vote for, don't think anything said in the debate will change my mind. I'll refrain from saying who my vote is for and why so that this blog can remain all about quilting. Or I might say something stupid and then it would be here on the internet forever embarassing me. Sewing is much more fun anyway!

Sew, another book for my lovely assistant!


A fish.

Moo cow and chickie. It was tough to get a good pic of chickie. The flash kept making such a glare. This one is not so great, either, but it was the best I got. I was trying to get a picture with this sitting on a pillow in my lap.

A frog and a lamb.

Doggie and chicken.

And a jungle bird.

It's really fun making these little books. It's a very haphazard, grab it and stitch, it is how it is kinda thing. I like that! I have several thoughts/ ideas about this:

- I wanna make a bigger one
- more pics on the page
- maybe coordinate the fabs a bit?
- textures?
- trims?
- tags?

We'll see what time allows.

More books

Here are a few more books:

A Christmas Story book and


B is for bears. There are actually 2 of these. Think anyboby will buy them? We'll see. If not, they will be presents for my lovely assistant and the small people we know.

I have some cool black fabric with retro looking yellow owls on it. I want to make a pinafore with it and maybe a little matching purse? I also have lots more fun fabric for little books. Now for more time....


And here's a shot of my other lovely assistant modeling a pinafore. Note the littlest lovely assistant in the shot, too? We simply cannot function without her. In case you don't recognize that look it's, "I'm ready! Take the picture already, dad!"