August Round Up

SO, I've been a lax blogger. 

So, here, my Achilles Tendon is doing OK, healing, but still painful. 

Bob is fine. 

Mom had a bad fall and was in the hospital. Check this out, this is the camera they placed in her room to monitor that she doesn't get out of bed unassisted.

Because she has a concussion as well as a really ugly bruise. At least there are no broken bones and she is home now doing a lot better.

I'm working on Social Sharks, a quilt pattern by Elizabeth Hartman.

These friendly sharks are pretty interesting to put together. 

And, I'm back to work now. This is one of the supply totes, just because it happened to be on my camera. That's it for August! Now let me get caught up on September.

 

This Little Beauty Named Lyric

 Sew, I picked up this little beauty on October 25. I've been holding off on this post to tell about it because I wanted to run her through her paces.

 This is Baby Lock Lyric. I'm really enjoying the list of things she'll do! She has a nice slim free arm, she also has a nice big extension table and a just right sized free arm tool box insert.  Auto thread cutter, needle threader-and that threader hasn't missed threading the needle yet!- and a good looking stitch, so far on all of them I've tried out!

 She has 5 built in alphabets and can sew them really well. I also needed to have the needle up/down selection, auto tension, and easy to drop feed dogs. The tension is actually called manual in the literature, but it automatically adjusts when you change stitches, but you can also adjust it with the display screen. Good looking blanket stitch and it adjusts size without loosing the nice stitching quality. SO many decorative stitches! I doubt I'll ever use them all, but it's fun to have some and they came with it:-)

 I dropped the feed dogs to test out the free motion quilting ability. It took me a little bit to get the sweet spot for a great looking stitch. I had to manually adjust the tension all the way to the top!

 The stiches look great on the front and the back!

 Here's the cute baby quilt I just finished for a lady at our church. She named the baby Gwendolyn.....
yeah, well Gwennie it is!

 I also put in a bigger needle and did this jean mending job.

 These are a lady from work's sons jeans.

 Lyric sewed though those pocket corners without any hesitation!

 And sewed that thick crotch seam-that's like 6 layers of denim total-without a bit of trouble!

 Good looking patch job!

 These were Carhart jeans, the color is kind of funky in this picture, but again, Lyric sewed it lik eit was nothing.

SO all in all, Lyric passes the tests! I am a little unhappy with having to adjust the tension before free motion quilting looks good, but it does look good when I adjust it all the way to 8. It has a lot more room between the needle and the right side of the machine too, I fit that baby quilt though there like nobody's business! So nice!

It uses the plastic class15 bobbins-the same as my little ol' Brother machine and my old workhorse Baby Lock. The bobbins wind easily and threading the machine is really easy-no crazy loops to find! AND it comes with a walking foot as well as a whole slew of other feet. SO now I better get busy and sew something!

Fixed & Family Reunion

 So Mom was working on this top for herself. She was almost done and realized she would like it much better if it had a placket.

 She likes a shirt with a collar, and she was at a standstill so I took it home and added a placket. It came out pretty good.....

 You'll never see that though, because for some reason I didn't take a finished picture-DARN IT!

 It was also time for the annual Family Reunion. Here's DD with Mom looking over some of the old pictures and stuff.

 Secretary Robin updating the mailing list.....

 And here's the MEETING.

 The meeting is a time for each family to tell about the past year and catch up with one another.

 It was a beautiful day and as they say "fun was had by all".

Pillowcases

 So I thought I'd do something a little different for valentine's day this year. For the kiddos I'm making pillowcases! It happens that while I was at the local JoAnn's store they had the cutest valentine fabric on sale! I had to get a bit.

 The down side is that a couple of my choices were one way prints that would be going the wrong way on a pillowcase. SO when that happens you have to cut the folded edge and re stitch so the long way is the way the print goes.

 See these bears would be going sideways if I just went with it the way they are.....

 But if I cut it apart on the fold and re stitch it the long way, the bears are right side up when the pillowcase is done.

 Awww, look how cute these are!! And I had this hunk of valentine fabric in my stash-I don't even remember buying it, but it's pretty cute too, so I have more valentine pillowcases!

There! That's a completed project and one more hunk of fabric out of the stash! Sew On!

A Day Trip to Mom & Dad's

 SO DD and me popped up to my Mom & Dad's on Sunday. Dad was busy running the buzz saw. He'd had the oldest garage torn down and will be using the scraps left over for firewood.

 I took a couple of short videos before I went inside to sew a little bit with Mom.

 Dad likes trees and he tries to keep the old ones in good shape.

 This is a good tree but it was too close to the house...solution? Encourage it to grow away from the house! That iron flywheel has been encouraging this tree for a few years now.

 Dad also blew the whistle for us! You know, not just anyone gets the whistle blown...that's really love made from brass!!

The Touble With Pairs

So when DD and me were at My Mom's awhile back we came across a couple of projects that neeeded to get finished. I took these cute slippers home to complete. They have a cute peacock embroidered design on them and well, we were looking at peacocks you might remember. 

 

 The first thing I discovered-DUH!-is that the non slip soles are non slip...like non slip and won't slide across the feed dogs or anything else! Scrap paper to the rescue!

 I gotta say these are cute slippers, but I would have assembled them differently.  This edge with so many layers is horrible. I'm not too optimistic for a beautiful finish, but they will be finished! And that's the trouble with pairs...there's another one after you are done with ONE!

 Wat a minute! MOM! How the heck did you manage to make one wider than the other? LOL! Well I'll trim it down a little bit.

 This is hard work here! OK all stuck together,. now just to apply bias binding...YIKES!

 Well here they are. Finished! Not the prettiest thing I've ever finished, but still good enough for around the house. I don't think Mom was planning on entering them at the Fair.

Hi Mom, your slippers are waiting for you!

New Power Tools & What's in the Bag

SO my Mom purchased a new power tool. Yup, this is a Bernina B-770. And I gotta say it's a pretty marvelous machine. That little screen actually plays animations-as opposed to just a drawing- to guide you through anything you need to know. And it is HUGE. Mom had to rearrange a few things just to make it fit. After she gets a little practice, I'm going to see if I can take it for a spin. You know how much I love power tools!

So for lunch we went into Marshalltown, Mom & Dad drove us by the latest artwork that the city of Marshalltown has installed. It's on 13th street. I guess it's an OK peice of art but, 13th street is kind of a vintage, traditional, old fashioned neighborhood, so I'm not sure it's a very good fit right there next to the tennis courts, across the parking lot from the Salvation Army store.

Back to Mom's sewing room, we helped her organize some of her supplies to make a little room for the new B-770. Just look at those tidy shelves behind DD!

Hey look! It's a bag from Monkey Wards! Who has missed Montgomery Wards? I can remember when it was a "huge" (huge to a little kid anyways) department store in downtown Marshalltown, Iowa. It had an upstairs-balcony, and I think it was down there on Main street across from Zeno's if I recall correctly.

Boy, they knew how to make a good bag back then didn't they! What's in the bag? Well lookie there-a chenille bath robe. What the heck? Mom says it was Grandma Forbes's robe. Somehow I can't exactly picture my Grandma in a peacock chenille robe, but it is a very cool garment. 

Worthy of storage in a Monkey Wards bag indeed! On with the organizing!!