Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Wine Basket Retirement Gift!

Just look what was delivered to my house this afternoon!
 Red Pepper Jelly
 
 Canadian made Icewine Chocolates shaped like maple leaves.
Chipotle Dipping Pretzels and Gourmet coffee.
Yummy Parmesan Bruschetta and light Carmelized Puffed Pastry twists.
 Three lovely bottles of wine.
A most excellent gift from my wonderful son and his beautiful wife.  Thanks so very much, I love you guys tons!!

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Liebster Award from Kelly

I am quite flattered that Kelly from khelikarma.blogspot.ca has nominated me for this blogger award!  Kelly has a marvelous blog complete with free motion quilting tips and fabulous projects.
The nomination includes
  • Telling 11 things about yourself
  • answer the questions posed to you be the nominator
  •  choose other bloggers to nominate (must have under 200 followers)
  • create 11 questions for your nominees
once nominated link back to the blogger that nominated you so they can learn more about you.
Kelly's 11 questions:
1. What is your favorite quilt block or pattern?
  • nine patch blocks fascinate me, the possibilities are endless.
2. What is your guilty pleasure?
  • dark chocolate
3. What inspires you?
  • quilting blogs, books and fabrics.
4. Tell me about your pets!
  • Lily is my English Springer spaniel, she will be 7 years old in May 2013.  I also have a 30 gallon tank of tropical fish.  I have always had a dog, in my 32 years of marriage my first dog was an English Springer, followed by a Brittany, then I had a Chesapeake bay retriever, another Springer, a corgie mix mutt and now Lily.  I hope to add Brittany pup to the family this summer.  The only fault with dogs is that they don't live long enough.
5. What is your music of choice?
  • I love all kinds of music expect acid rock (sounds like noise to me). To name a few I enjoy Blue Rodeo, Celine Dion, Josh Groban, Trisha Yearwood, Susan Boyle, KD Lang, Toby Keith, Enya, Mozart and Beethoven.
6. Favorite vacation spot
  • Shilo golf course
7. What is the most influential book you have read?
  • Toxic Parents by Nancy Forward
8. What quilts are on your "bucket list" to make?
9. What is your favorite quilt making technique?
  • free motion quilting
10. What is your favorite color combination?
  • primary colours with white
11. What quilting tool or gadget can you not live without? (other than your sewing machine!) 
Eleven things about me
  1. I collect vintage sewing machines and currently own one dozen machines including three threadles, one singer 15-91 with a gear driven motor and 1956 Domestic Automatic by White.
  2. I make wine, reds, wines and fruity wines.
  3. I'm an avid golfer.
  4. I consider my son and daughter to be my greatest accomplishments.  They are grown-up and happily married.  Now I am waiting impatiently for grandchildren.
  5. My husband is my very best friend in the world.
  6. Tammy's craft emporium is my favourite room in the house.
  7. I believe in angels and frequently talk to them.
  8. I love to make baby quilts, bed quilts, Alzheimer's touch quilts, table cloths, dinner napkins, reusable shopping bags, dish towels as gifts because a homemade gift is more personal.
  9. My favourite colour is purple.
  10. I make soups from scratch: chicken noodle, hamburger, split pea and more. I usually give my soup away in one quart sealers.  
  11. I have a huge stash of fabric and thread, I will have to live to be 100 to use it all up.
In no particular order my nominees:
My questions:
  1. Do you have any pets, if yes please tell me about them.
  2. How many sewing machines do you have?  If you own more than one which is your favourite?
  3. If you had an entire day to do anything you desire, what would you do?
  4. What is your favourite food?
  5. Do you collect things?  If yes, what?
  6. Who is your best friend and why?
  7. What do you enjoy the most about blogging?
  8. What do you like the least about blogging?
  9. To date, what do you consider your greatest accomplishment in life?
  10. What would you do with a million dollars?
  11. What is your favourite movie?
To my dear followers, please feel free to answer any or all of these questions in the comments section of this post.  I would love to read about your favourite pets, accomplishments and dreams.

Friday, February 8, 2013

Reversible Place mats - Tutorial

Several years ago, Fabric land was clearing out this wonderful quilters' cotton fabric at buy one metre for a dollar and get five metres free.  Apparently skulls and roses are not that popular for quilting.  One of my goals in 2013 is to use up supplies from the stash instead buying more.  These place mats are made from 100% cotton, denim cotton, Superior cotton thread, Warm and Natural Cotton batting.

This fabric was washed, dried and ironed before making the quilt sandwich. 
I made this oval placemats about 30 years ago.  Back then I bought quilted fabric and bias tape, cut the ovals out, attached the bias tape and they were done.
This is a bought blue cotton place mat that shrunk in the laundry.  ~sigh  For this project I decided to use a rectangle rather than oval shape.
The skull and roses print was supposedly 45" wide and the demin 60'.  The batting was 45" by 60" so I cut the fabric to fit the batting.  The bottom of the quilt sandwich was pulled taut to the table, then held in place with carpenter's plastic clamps.
Next the batting laid out smooth and flat.
Followed by the denim top side.
This quilt sandwich was pin basted.
I choose the Superior 100% cotton cream coloured thread.
It was quilted on my Pfaff Creative 2, feed dogs down, stitch length set to zero using the modified dynamic quilting foot.
 The quilting design is jesters' hats.
I love, love these Schmetz Gold titanium needles.  It is a small needle 75/11 but super strong. I made 11 embroidery snowflakes (minimum 17,000 stitches for the little snowflakes and 25,000 for the big ones) with this needle before the place mat project and the needle is still terrific.
 
The Superior cotton thread was really messy to use, it kept building up fuzz in the bobbin area and around the needle.  I cleaned out the bobbin casing and area every time the bobbin ran out.  Plus the low bobbin sensor quit working.
Cut to 12' by 18"
 
 
Oh goody, more ironing to make the binding.
 
 These strips are 2.25" wide.  I use Dara's tutorial to make binding.
 Attaching the binding.
Both sides of the binding were machine stitched.  I used a three step zig zag stitch to attach the binding to the denim side.
 
Yippee! The first place mat is finished.
Dear Readers, which side do you like better?
The pottery cup has Stash Blueberry Superfruit caffeine free herbal tea in it.  The cup was made by a local potter who sells his pottery in an old church he converted to a pottery shop on route to Clear Lake.
 
 I prefer the denim side because the jesters' hats are so visible.
These dishes have gone through the dishwasher so many times, the pattern is fading.  I have nicer dishes but I wanted to show off the place mat not the dishes.  The corelle dishes were put out to demo the size of the place mat.
One place mat finished, eight more and two pot holders left on this project.  These place mats are a gift for Shannon.  I do hope she likes them.  Gosh it is so good to be back to sewing again.  

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Big Sister Cape #2

The dilemma of not having enough light blue fabric to make the cape and hood was resolved by selecting a different fabric from the stash.
This purple fabric is same fabric I use for re-useable grocery bags.  It is 100% polyester or nylon.
 
I used the same decorative stitch on this cape as first one, but this time the machine skipped stitches on the top side.  Even after changing the needle and adjusting the tension. The decorative stitches on the cape #1 were made with 100% polyester pink surger thread in the needle and bobbin.  This time it was 100% trilobal polyester embroidery thread in both the needle and bobbin.
 
The skipped stitches did not appear on the pink (back) side, this could be because the fabric and thread colour match so closely.
The most obvious skipped stitches were repaired by hand with a needle and thread.
 
The grape coloured fabric provides a high contrast to the pink fairy print.
Like the first cape, this one is reversible.
 
Dear Readers,  Why do you think the Husqvarna Lily skipped some decorative stitches on the second cape but not the first.