Bali Bag

My sister and I recently took a class where we began construction of a handbag. I didn’t finish during the class time, but worked on it this weekend.

After signing up for the class, I found a jelly roll in Malka Dubrawsky’s fabric line from Moda, A Stitch in Color. I’ve been an admirer of her work since it appeared on the cover of Quilting Arts Magazine several years ago.  I just love the bright colors she uses. I need to get together with my sister to find some fabulous beads from her collection for further embellishment.
But there’s more…look at the machine I used to finish the bag.

It’s a Singer 401, one of their first zigzag machines. It’s getting hard to find these machines “in the wild'”, but this one was waiting for me at a local thrift shop. It runs beautifully and sews a great straight stitch. I even had it doing some bar tacks with the zigzag function.

What I’m reading

Alligators, Old Mink and New Money by Alison Houtte
A memoir written by a former model who opens a vintage clothing store in Brooklyn New York. It’s just a fluff of a book, but fun. It made me want to go to Brooklyn and visit her store.

Dreams of Joy by Lisa See
Lisa See wrote Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and the prequel to this book, Shanghai Girls. Dreams of Joy covers the period in Chinese history of Mao’s great leap forward. This public policy experiment had disastrous effects on the populace, the economy and the environment. Although fiction, it does depict what life in the “countryside” was like during this time.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
This book won the National Book Award and its influence from Faulkner is apparent. It’s a story of twelve days in the life of a rural Mississippi family in the days leading up to and following hurricane Katrina. It’s raw and visceral. There were parts that made me gasp. The narrator, 15 year old pregnant Esche, is a character you won’t forget, nor will you forget her brother’s fighting dog, China.

The Obamas by Jodi Kantor
I didn’t learn anything new in this book that read like a People magazine article.

Inside Out and Back Again by Thannha Lai
A book in verse that tells the story of a young girl who leaves Viet Nam in the panic and frenzy of the fall of Saigon and her family's resettlement in Alabama. I read it in an hour, then re-read it because it was such a powerful story. She captures the essence of what I imagine a child’s experience would be like.  Recommend!

NOLA 2012

The SEC basketball tournament was in New Orleans this past weekend. It was the first time Tom and I had spent any significant time in the city since we were there for the Sugar Bowl festivities in 1968. That event holds a special place in my heart because it was during that time where we became engaged. Here we are “back in the day” celebrating New Year’s Eve at Pat O’Bryan’s.  That’s me and my sweetie in the left corner.

We looked in on Pat O’Bryan’s on our most recent trip and it is remarkably unchanged.

My daughter wrote an excellent post about all the fun we had this year. Click on the photo to view her blog post.

To view last year’s March madness post click here.

My Italian Boyfriend

Some of you know about my fascination with vintage sewing machines. I have a wonderful, modern Bernina Artista 630 on which I do the majority of my sewing. That said, there is something I love about the sound, the feel and the heft of machines made before 1965. In starting the compassion quilt project at our church I began looking for used machines at thrift shops.
A few weeks ago I found an Italian Necchi BCJ. The Necchi enthusiasts say the Necchi Italian machines were the best ever made, so for $15 I bought it. Languishing in a shed outside the store was a filthy Singer. It was so dirty I couldn’t even tell what model it was. The clerk threw it in for an extra $5. With high hopes I sent the Necchi to a repair shop to get a new motor and power cord. It was repaired and it sews Ok, but still needs some work on tension as it puckers fabric. I spent an afternoon working on the upper and lower tension and it’s still not right. I’m a little disappointed. I thought I would have a new love with this Italian. He just seems a bit fussy to me, just what I don’t need, a high maintenance boyfriend. But you have to admit, he’s got a lot of style going on.



Then I got the Singer out of it’s filthy case, and found a very dirty 301A slant needle machine with years of lint and crud on it. I have had a yen for one of these for several years. I wish I had taken a photo before I began cleaning it.
I spent the morning cleaning and oiling it. It was not locked up, just dirty and in need of oil. After I got everything inside cleaned and oiled, I did a test sew. Perfect! I mean it was a perfect stitch! I had different color thread in the needle and the bobbin so I could analyze the tension, and it was perfect. Unbelievable. Tom put a bit of electrical tape on the cord and this boyfriend was good to go. I’ve ordered a new cord since I have to tape this one on to stay in the machine, but that is minor.  After the initial cleaning, the body still had some stains on it and needed extra TLC.




Having learned in another blog about TR-3 automobile cleaner and polish, I went to work on the stains and rust. This product is amazing.
Here are the after photos




In the world of vintage machines the Singer 301A is known as the big brother to the Singer Featherweight and has the reputation of being trouble free and easy to maintain, more like my kind of guy. Signore Necchi may be history.

Baby quilt patterns

Jodi Nelson over at Pleasant Home Quilts has photos and tutorials for wonderful scrap quilts. They are simple patterns, but her choice of colors are just delightful.

The first one is a scrappy Roman square done in a variety of green prints. Clicking on the photo will take you to her website

This one is a variation on the Roman square using pieced rectangles and white.

 

She has also posted a tutorial on the Moda website for a pinwheel quilt using 5” squares. Our group has lots of 4 1/2 squares, and those would work just as well.  In the tutorial, she cuts her printed squares in half diagonally, then pairs them with a white triangle, cut from the same size square. To avoid that bias edge, I would suggest the method below.

Pair pair two squares, one solid color (or white) with a printed square of the same size. Put them right sides together. Mark the diagonal line with a pencil and sew 1/4” from each side. Using a rotary cutter and ruler, cut apart on the line you drew.  Open your triangle and press to the printed fabric. Clicking here will open an easy tutorial on how to make them.

Using two 4.5” squares, and this method, you will get two triangles, just slightly larger than 4” (4 1/8”)

Here are some of our recent creations

 

 

 

Fantastic footwear art

Meet Kobi Levin, a footwear designer from Israel. His blog features some fantastic creations. If you don’t get enough here, you can go to his website to see all he has posted. I was amazed.
This one is named Elephant

Toucan

Olive Oyl

Blonde ambition

Miao

chewing gum

Compassion Quilts

Recently I started a group at my church for people who wanted to learn to sew. We had the goal of making 30 tiny baby quilts to make available to our local hospital. These quilts are given to families who lose a child at birth.
I collected sewing machines, applied for start up funds from our mission ministry and set up a time. We currently have about ten women who come regularly. Some have never sewed, others haven’t sewn in years, and only one of them was familiar with modern quilting methods.



Our first quilts are comprised of twenty five 4.5” blocks with 2.5” borders. This makes a quilt about 24” square.
Everyone got busy, cutting, ironing, designing and sewing.




Here’s one of our quilters with her very first quilt. She had never operated a machine before. Can’t you just see the satisfaction in her face?

At our last meeting we covered the quilt sandwich, and one quilter starting a cross hatch pattern. I’ll post updates as we progress.

Be My Valentine

It’s my annual Valentine’s Day post; a photo tour of valentines I sent as well as those that Tom and I received. To see more of our family valentines, check out Patti Wagon’s website
**********************************************
Here’s the outside of the one from Tom to me


inside (Hoodoo photos were taken this fall in Bryce Canyon)


Mine to him had a political flavor


and the inside


From Laurel


inside




From Patricia outside


Inside, an adorable hand knitted scarf


More from Patricia
outside


and another knitted embellishment


The ones Tom and I sent to Patricia are on her website, along with the ones she sent and the one she received from Laurel.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Middle school lock-in

A few months ago I did a pillow painting and sewing project with the young people at our church. They did a great job, and we had lots of fun. This past weekend, it was the middle schoolers who had the opportunity to have a similar project.

They painted 18” cotton duck squares, with Pebeo setacolor and Jaquard fabric paints. They used a variety of techniques including masking with painters tape strips, cutting shapes from freezer paper, stenciling and stamping. They let them dry for an hour or so then came back and embellished them with Tulip Glow in the Dark dimensional paints. I only had a few bottles, so they made dots, squiggles and added some text.  I don’t recommend the product for covering large areas, but was great for small beadlike embellishments.
The next morning the paint had dried and they sewing their pillows and stuffed them. They loved learning to use a sewing machine. One of the boys told me that he thought sewing was going to be boring, but he now loved it. He was the one who wanted to wind and load bobbins, thread the machine and see how everything worked.

These photos were taken in daylight, but in the dark, they were absolutely glowing.

Home Decorator Sewing

Recently my sister in law came for a visit. JoAnn’s was having a home decorator fabric sale and she purchased several fabrics to update her screened porch.
She doesn’t sew, but I agreed to be her “sewist”.  First stop was a tablecloth for the round table. Then reversible green and blue napkins. So far I’m just cutting and doing a rolled edge on my serger.

There was enough left over from the tablecloth fabric to make placemats. I used simple pillow case construction  and edge stitched them. 


 
Next were covers for the porch swing and two wicker chairs. Again, easy sewing, no cording, no boxed cushions, just simple construction.



















She purchased some additional fabrics to make a curtain for the west end of the porch and cover some dining chairs, but these are no-sew projects with duct tape and a staple gun.

She also bought 100% cotton decorator fabric for two tablecloths for her indoor dining table. This was supposed to be a simple serged rolled edge.  I washed the fabric, cut off the selvedge and was left with only 49” of width; not enough for a nice drop.  I found a pattern by Janine Babich  I had cut out of SewNews from 2005 and decided to adapt it for a wide mitered flanged border that would leave no raw edges. It took several stops and starts, and my brain cells were definitely on “firing” mode.  Now I’ll do another one in blue. Since I now know what I’m doing, it won’t take long at all. I’ll have enough fabric left over to make some placemats.  But that’s another day.

You Are Not the Boss of Me

I have had my present Viking 936 serger for seven years. Until this month, my serger was the boss of me. I was intimidated by it. So intimidated that I only did three thread overlock and three thread rolled hem since those two stitches did not require that I change any needles and I could tie off threads to change thread colors. It was a loooooooong sewing session when I broke a thread and had to rethread it from the directions. Coverstitch was out of the question, way too complicated.

Before Christmas I spent an hour in a one on one session with the local Viking dealer and she showed me a few tricks that gave me the confidence to thread the machine and change the needle position. She even went over the coverstitch with me, but I was going to need a lot more practice.

This past Friday a Baby Lock dealer in my area was offering an all day intermediate serger class, and I went, even though I knew I would not get a lot of support for my Viking machine.  Enter Kate , another class participant and a free lance Viking teacher with a machine just like mine. She sat right beside me and interpreted all the Baby Lock instructions for me in the Viking language. She loaned me her specialty feet and was truly a blessing to me and the other Viking owner participating in the class. She had lots of tips and recommendations for additional resources.

We did a lot of things in the workshop, inserting a zipper. making and inserting piping, pin tucks, and of course the dreaded coverstitch.

Here’s my zipper sample, and yes, I know it’s not centered, but I learned how to do it, and it’s a breeze.

Piping and insertion was quick and easy too, Kate showed me how to turn a corner.

Did the Baby Lock dealer want me to spend $3,000 on a new machine? Yes. Was I willing to do that? No. I spent several hours this weekend threading and re-threading my Viking machine, changing from overlock to coverstitch and back again, and my confidence has improved to the point, I can tell my serger, “You are not the boss of me!”

I do want to say that if I were buying a new serger today I would likely buy a Baby Lock. My machine is great, but the Baby Lock has it beat as far as ease of use.

eBay listings

Seems like every year I get the itch to list a few things on eBay. If you want mid-twentieth century ladies’ accessories, Lauffer stainless flatware, Royal Copenhagen figurines, or Steiff bears, head over to eBay and check out my auctions. User name: Sandcrab66.

white kid opera gloves anyone?

Steiff Bear?

Vintage handbags and scarfs?