A Want Fulfilled!!!

This past Tuesday I headed west to Manassas, Virginia. It is only about a 35 minute drive. I had heard about a new quilt shop out there – Aurora Quilts – and a shop with fabrics, yarns and needlework supplies – Old Town Needlecrafts. Aurora Quilts had a nice selection of fabrics for a very tiny shop and Old Town had a lot of quilting fabric even though knitting seems to be their main gig. 

 Church Street in Manassas Virginia. Aurora Quilts is in the building on the right.

 A church on the opposite corner.

The railroad tracks and a corner cafe.

I also visited a nice gift shop called Whimsical Galerie. Then, I headed for the antique shops. I spent quite a while in Iron Horse Antiques. I found several quilts I thought were charming…

 Double Wedding Ring

My head is spinning from looking in block books trying to find an exact match for this one.  An album block or postage stamp? What would you call it?

Love the red thread used for the hand quilting. 

 Whirligig or Flyfoot or something else? This one is a top that was both hand and machine stitched.

 I thought the barber shop cabinet to the right would be a fun place to store threads and other notions.

 another Double Wedding Ring - took some closeups of this one...

 

But the only thing that came home with me from Iron Horse was this kitchen scale. I thought it was cute and I could say we “needed” it for weighing fruits and vegetables when canning this summer.

My big find was at a going out of business sale. I walked in the door and in the first booth I went into found a black box on the floor. Hmmm. Grabbed the tag – feather light sewing machine. Hmmm. Dropped my purse and stooped down (ouch!), kneeled down. Opened the case, pulled out the top shelf full of attachments and a bobbin, pulled out the machine and started inspecting it. Looks like a Singer Featherweight! So I went up to the front desk and asked about their discount. She gave me a price. It was a good discount, but still a little more than I wanted to pay for something that needed service and possibly repairs. I went back to the booth and called my husband – giving him the serial number and asking him to look it up online - a 1938 221 manufactured in New Jersey. OK – it is a Featherweight – not just me wishing it so. She went down again on her price and it was sold.

I didn’t squeal until after I was in my car!

Here’s my new toy. It’s in the shop now. I can’t wait to get it back – just hope it’s not too, too expensive. 

These machines are so darn cute!

The view out the window above my kitchen sink.

Happy Easter!

Rollup and Shoofly

Here is my weekend project. It didn’t take all weekend, but it took longer than it should. I bought the booklet Pockets and Rollups for My Red Cape by Edyth C. O’Neill last year. I’m glad I didn’t pay full price for it because the pattern instructions were pretty sparse. Photos or drawings would have helped. It took some sewing and unsewing to finally figure out what I was supposed to do. To be fair, there is a lot of other informative text about textiles then and now and some nice photos in the book.

I feel really stupid! I just picked up the book to start giving the missing instructions (I was looking for the pattern piece letters) and FOUND DIAGRAMS on one of the pattern pages. Are you kidding! There was nothing in the text in the part titled "Instructions for making Pockets and Rollups" to refer to diagrams on the pattern page. Bother! Okay, so I'll just show you how I made the little clasp for the button.

I made a 1/2" wide strip much longer than I needed - about 2 1/2" long. I pressed it in half and then half again.

Pinned it - probably should have used my little applique pins, but they were upstairs.

Then I topstitched it. I had to coax it along some by manually advancing it and then pulling the back thread because the feed dogs didn't have much to grab.

Trimmed it and attached it to the rollup before sewing on the binding. Then I trimmed it again.

The size of the loop was just big enough for the button to slip through.

This was intended as a gift, but I think I'll have to make another one.  The top fabric looks a little odd. There is another flower below and to the right of the flower showing, but it is covered by the first pocket. I'm also not happy with the color of the binding and the blue pocket. Also, the gathered pocket is a little too loose. I guess I'll just have to keep it for myself ;o)

The Shoofly is in the machine. I’m just doing some simple free motion quilting. I liked the designs in Eva A. Larkin's book Free Motion Quilting Made Easy and auditioned some of them on butcher paper (drawing the block pattern first).

It seemed like most of them were either taking too much brain power to execute or too many stitched points coming together at the center so I ended up with this.

Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef

My mom and I went downtown yesterday to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History to see the crochet coral reef. It was beyond anything we could have imagined. I’m sorry for so many, many photos, but it was hard to pick from the many I took. Remember to click on them to enlarge.

I think this one might have been made with some vintage pieces.

This woman is showing the crochet reef examples to these kids. The girl has a magnifying glass. There were a lot of kids around and they seemed to think this was very cool (or awesome or whatever they say nowadays).

 The top piece is made with hair bands, and notice the crocheted flowers in the center.

 A plastic bottle is used in the piece that has a lot of orange.

This display was 7 feet tall!

 

This is my favorite shot. Notice in the left, top the big clam shell on it's side. 

 This is a real one!

The HCCR is a project by the Institute For Figuring (love this name!). The HCCR was created and curated by Margaret and Christine Wertheim.  From the brochure – “The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef is a celebration of the intersection of geometry and handicraft and a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world. Launched as a response to the devastation of living reefs from global warming and ocean acidification, the Crochet Reef resides equally in the realms of art, science, mathematics and environmentalism.”

I learned to crochet as a teenager, but I haven’t done it since my 20’s. I’m remembering the afghan I made my step sister and her new husband back in 1976. It was made of black and neon yellow, green, blue and orange (maybe some other colors, too) granny squares. What a sight! I’m sure she got rid of that thing a long time ago. My mom is a knitter and I learned to knit a few years ago.  I made a few items, but knitting hurts my hands so I gave it up (I’m sparing them for quilting!). I haven’t tried to pick up crocheting again because I heard it is hard on the wrists. This is tempting me, but since I don’t need a coral reef (in the oceans, yes, but not in my house) I think I’m safe. ;O)

For more information, go to www.crochetcoralreef.org.

This and That

Check out the Youtube videos Kat posted on her blog Quilt Azubi. They show the quilt decorated home of a Dutch quilter (look for the red and white tumbling blocks) and I mean decorated. No such thing as too many quilts!

I finished the shoofly top for Japan and hope to get it basted soon. I hope I can complete this by the end of the month. I did finish the smaller donation quilts. The one on the left has already been delivered to Carolina. She will take it to the neonatal intensive care unit where she works. The other is for Japan.

The Springfield chapter of QU had our annual yard sale Tuesday morning. I took a bag of stuff to sell and brought a bag of stuff home with me! Look at all I got for just $8! The fabric on the left is probably 80’s calicos and on the right are some more recent lines. The dark blue is a half-yard of a Barbara Brackman Civil War Crossings Susquehanna. The little bundle is Cocheco Print Works from The American Textile History Museum. I had this bundle and used all of it so I was happy to find more. I love the idea of yard sales and auctions. Nothing new is purchased for it, but money is made for the guild and everyone goes home with something new to her. I know some things go from chapter to chapter and auction to auction. I once won a knitted scarf at a quilt auction, found it wasn’t right for me and donated it to my church auction!

The sun has finally decided to shine here. It is still a little chilly, but the trees are starting to bloom and the grass needs to be cut. Warm weather will soon follow. Yesterday, I started thinking about watermelon - hmmmmm. I’m looking forward to May when the farmers markets open and the fresh, local fruits and veggies debut.

Look what came in the mail today...

31cm x 33cm

Today is my husband's birthday, but I'm the one who received a gift! I won this precious little quilt from Merumo's giveaway for Japan. I was having a pretty stinky day - you know, one of those where little things keep going wrong - until about 5:00 when my hubby brought the mail in. Fortunately, there were birthday greetings for him, too!

Veronique mailed this quilt, but it was made by Sylvie in France. It was designed by Cecile. Hand pieced, quilted and embroidered. Thank you, Merumo, Veronique, Silvie and Cecile. I LOVE IT! Check out these blogs - they are fabulous stitchers and their photos are BEAUTIFUL!

I think I just found Silvie's blog. I don't know whether I should be inspired or just pack it all up! I just love what these women create - the colors, textures and detail...and the setting! So beautiful!
Second edit - THIS is Silvie's blog.  Such talented women!

Lemon cake for dessert...

Hand Quilting

Thanks for all your encouraging comments, particularly about the little red and white quilt top I made last week and the midnight stars I just basted. I’m not sure how I’m going to quilt the R&W and I already have a hand quilting project so I don’t know why I basted the midnight stars. I just felt moved to. I plan to do the hanging diamonds as Lori described in this post. I’ve just done a few hand quilting projects. I love the idea of hand quilting – it is relaxing and peaceful – and I really like that it gives me time with my quilt.

Here is more detail of the quilt at the top of this post. It was my first hand quilting project. I made it following the instructions exactly for Road to Oklahoma in Simply Scrappy Quilts by Nancy J. Martin. She also used 30’s reproduction fabrics. The exact same fabric she used for the border I used for the back. I didn’t use much imagination with this one. It is twin size and took me 5 YEARS to quilt. I completed it in 2002. I’m sure resigning from my employment with the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington D.C. in 2001 had something to do with it finally being completed.

My little flower appliqué is heavily quilted. Easier to do on a small quilt! Learned on this one how important it is to at least attempt to remove dark threads and snip dark seams when the front is a light color.

All I did on the quilt I showed in this post was outline the stars and pumpkins.

These 16-patches were made from leftover strip sets from another project. I pieced, basted and started quilting it last year. It is the first time I used a wool batt (Quilters Dream). It has a much higher loft than I’m used to, but I like it.

For my first two hand quilted quilts I used this natural YLI quilting thread. I plan to use it on the midnight stars. I like this thread a lot, but it is hard to find around here.

I wanted a darker color for the pumpkin and stars. Normally, I wouldn’t use a polyester/cotton thread, but that is what I had. This one is DMC. I probably wouldn’t use it on a bed quilt.

On the 16-patch quilt, I’m using Superior Threads King Tut quilting thread Tone-on-Tone by Sue Nickels. I hunted all over the Quilters Unlimited quilt show last year for red quilting thread and none was to be found. Superior had other colors, but not red. I asked if this thread could be used for hand quilting (it doesn’t specify on the spool) and the man emphatically said “no”.  I felt challenged. It is working fine. It isn’t “waxed” like other quilting thread, but I’m not having any trouble with it - a testament to the quality of Superior Threads.

These are the hoops I use. I like the wooden one with the stand, made by Marie Products in Tucson Arizona, for the support. I use the square plastic one when I get to the edges and if I’m quilting someplace other than at home.

I try to avoid marking, but don’t feel confidant enough with the fans. I can’t find the pencil I used for the Road to Oklahoma – it was just something I picked up at the local quilt shop. I used a Berol Verithin pencil in silver to mark the 16-patch. It was recommended to me in a class and I did test it to make sure it will come out with washing. Don’t know if you can tell, but I haven’t washed the Road to Oklahoma. I’m not sure why – I usually wash my quilts after putting in that last stitch.

Some other useful tools –

That pinching action of pulling the needle can cause pain over time for me. These pliers, suggested by Diane of McLean QU, seem to help. These gloves also help my hands from feeling achy. They are very snug and I just throw them in the washer and dryer when they start feeling loose. At my age I need reading glasses. I like my new progressive lenses when I’m at the sewing machine, but prefer the reading glasses for hand work.

My conclusion with the needles is changing them often. A bent needle is no longer useful; get a new one!

The leftovers I used for the 16-patch came from this lap quilt. It was a McLean Chapter challenge – just use fabric from your stash. It was the first time I pieced batting for a quilt. I did it by hand, but I’ve read on other blogs about using a zigzag stitch on your sewing machine to piece batting. Has anyone tried this? I would think it would leave a lot of fuzz in your machine.

I finished this book last night. It gives a brief biography of all the signers. It’s cheeky, sometimes a bit too, but I really enjoyed it. My interest in these men began when I read John Adams by David McCullough several years ago. I loved reading about the relationship between John and his wife, Abigail.

Sun, please come out!