Countdowns

For Christmas this year, I totally surprised my son.  He had been interested in a designer hoodie that was priced at $200. It's too high a price for his or my budget. So, he asked me if I could make one. Well, that was months ago, some time late summer. Just before Thanksgiving, he said "You have all these sewing machines, and you don't use them for sewing."  Man! Nothing like a major meltdown from a kid as a reminder that Christmas was coming quickly.

He didn't know that I had saved the image of that hoodie so that I could copy the pattern. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas while my son was in school, I had my countdown to producing "the hoodie".   Monday-Friday daily for two weeks, 2:30 P.M. became my alarm. I would clean up all materials and vacuum up all the threads. At night, I worked on socks for my dad and daughter. I didn't want a nosy kid discovering my gift to him.

On Christmas, he opened a huge box with a pattern sitting on top of tissue paper, under that was "the hoodie". My son looked at the pattern in total  surprise. A "what's this" look came over his face. I told him to look under the tissue. An astonished kid stated, " And here I thought you were just knitting socks all this time. I thought you were the slowest knitter...which would make for the most expensive socks."




















Yes, I'm not the fastest knitter, but who really cares since it's my time, my countdown.

With that, I leave you with a countdown that I can't control, a new year.
Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year!  May 2013 be peaceful, healthy, and prosperous for all.

Twas..

The Night Before Christmas....

Have a Merry Christmas!

Playing with Gadgets

I dislike shopping for Christmas. I love Christmas! It's just that I dislike shopping with a mob; I need my space. Instead, I would rather stay home making gifts, ornaments, and cookies. Not every year do I make gifts or ornaments, but I do always bake cookies. Well this year, I took a break from my baking to make some ornaments and gifts.

I gathered up my gadgets and recycled Christmas cards.  I also used leftover Christmas fabrics from past projects along with leftover batting in my creation. I love recycling!  

After entertaining myself by using the circular cutter to form circles, I stitched a decorative stitch to the sandwich material using my Singer 224.












Finished! In lieu of Christmas cards to my neighbors this year, I will be giving them these. They can use these ornaments as they wish: to decorate a package, as a tag for a present, or simple as an ornament for their tree.

Knitting with Toothpicks

That is what my brother asked me when we were together at my parents over Thanksgiving holiday.  He looked at my knitting needles, laughed, and asked,  "Are you knitting with toothpicks?".  Here are just a couple of my toe up socks that I have been working on.  The orange and blue sock is my very first toe up that was knitted using just two needles. 

This green sock is my second toe up. I prefer working with the three needles so that I can try on the sock as I work.

Shattered Bones

Finally finished my October quilt.
 

I had purchased some fabric with a skeleton print that could be made into an apron over a year ago at a quilt show.  When I saw the fabric, I thought this would make for a great theme for a Halloween quilt. Well time went by and that quilt never happened.  I kept seeing other quilts to make, and my quilting "to do" list grew. I started into my black, white, and red triangle quilt with no Y seams that was on "to do" list. As I was sewing the front together, I thought of many possible backs. I love the look of double sided quilts. Well, I had leftover fabrics from the front that could be incorporated into the back. I used those pieces to form triangles for the back. Since I didn't have enough of them, I came up with the idea of scattering them onto a large background fabric and stitching them down with a decorative stitch.

 Then, I remember that skeleton. That motif set the theme for the back of the quilt.

Binding was made from the leftover directions and sections of the apron fabric.
I'm so pleased that section of bones can be found on the binding.

And that is how I came up with the title Shattered Bones for this quilt.

Tension

Oh no, tension issues!

It pays to do things correctly the first time around. I realized that the thread tension dial was not correctly in place on my Singer 224. That is what I get for not taking that area apart to clean correctly when I first got the machine. Before starting work on the decorative stitching today, I took some very thin yarn with a light amount of oil to clean between the discs. Well in doing so, I somehow again messed up the tension mechanism. This is the third time I have done this stupid maneuver, and somehow the machine still sews. Normally it had been an easy fix, but not today. Well, I took the thread tension assemble apart and cleaned all the parts.

 Reassembled the parts and adjusted the tension.

Much cleaner! Plus, it works!

Camouflage

I love concealing imperfections of my piece work with decorative stitching.

A hint to the look of the back of the quilt and the binding.

Production Day

I'm finally quilting the black, white, and red quilt with straight stitch quilting (Davis NVF) and decorative stitching (Singer 224).  This one red triangle is from fabric used in some past Christmas project. Hohoho off to work I go!

Feast Day

Happy Feast of St. Nicholas!