Success!

Well after getting annoyed by my walking foot issues and goggling and sniffing around the internet I thought that maybe it was the fact I was using a spray adhesive to sandwich my table runners was causing the grief. So I sewed together some more scrappy squares to make into another table runner. I do have two cot sized quilts ready to sandwich but I didn't want to do my experiment on them. Once I had the squares done it was quick to cut them down to 3.5 inches and then sew them all together, that is actually a deep green as a border, not black as it looks in the picture. So all ready to go and I got out the pins and pinned away!

Then, new needle in and away we went and surprise, surprise, still skipping! Arggg! So I took out my King Tut thread I was using and decided to try my green Aurifil thread instead. Well, that was better, only skipped once in a row instead of five times with the King Tut. But by now I'm back to thinking its my walking foot because when I was piecing the top of this runner, not one single skipped stitch! So I took the @#$%%=*!! walking foot off, unpicked the five rows I had just done and replaced it with an open toe foot and started again. The result? Absolutely perfect. Go figure!

So to save myself going through all that grief again, here are my quilting specs:
Pressure dial on the back of the machine - 1.
Upper thread tension - 4.
Stitch width - 2.5.
Stitch length - 4.
Top thread - Aurifil 50.
Bottom thread - King Tut.
Direction of quilting - Down, pivot, back up, pivot, down etc.

A Purple Table Runner

It was a long weekend here last weekend and the husband took off for a three day trip with the boys to Melbourne to watch some games of footy *yawn* which equals a whole lot of uninterrupted sewing time! A friends Mum is visiting and it was her 70th birthday shortly after the weekend, so what better pressure to set myself than a deadline of the weekend to sew a table runner as a birthday pressie? So with her favourite colour noted - can you guess what it was? - I set up the ironing board in the kitchen and popped a new needle in the machine and away we went!

It had to be a simple design and I took inspiration from my green/blue/yellow lap quilt and cut up wedges of purple and sewed them into roughly 5 inch squares, then I trimmed them down to 4 inches trying to make sure I had a wedge of the Dennis Schmidt fabric I purchased in San Diego in each block. 18 blocks later I was ready to sew it all together and sandwich it and get quilting.

Here is where the grief commenced. I popped on my new walking foot that arrived back in March, put a new needle in the machine and started sewing, my usual straight up and down quilting style. After about the sixth row, the machine started skipping stitches. At first just one a row, so I slowed down, then the next row it was a few more skipped stitches. Odd I though. So I stopped, rethreaded the machine and continued, still skipping stitches. So I stopped again, cursed, changed the bobbin, rethreaded again, checked the needle was in properly and went off again. Guess what? Still skipping! More cursing, I took open the bobbin case and cleaned out all the dust, replaced the needle. rewound a new bobbin and started again. Still skipping!! I was getting to the stage of chucking my machine against the wall by now. The weekend was drawing to a close, I wanted this finished, so I took off the walking foot and unplugged the naughty machine, put it on the floor by me sewing table and got my other machine out, popped the walking foot on that and continued away. No skipped stitches now but a gradual pulling down of the fabric..... Why is that? It is sewn with a walking foot, it should be even, it is a small runner, I hold it up as I sew, there is very little drag. I know some people suggest you should go up and then down when quilting like this but to be honest I don't like the little zig zag effect it has on the edge of the border. But maybe that zig zag is better than this huge pull?? I'm going to do another runner like this and then experiment, up and down and also sew one on my friends Bernina, maybe it is my machine in general? I ended up gifting the runner to my friends Mum, she didn't notice it. Meanwhile my naughty machine is still sitting on the floor in time out.

Rainbow Pebbles

I have started quilting one of my rainbow jelly roll quilts. I'm going for pebbling all over in the white and then in the colour strips, a chain of pebbles in a matching thread. Its looking good. A lot of loose threads to hide in the wadding but worth it hopefully.

Another Tablerunner!

I have bit of a head cold at the moment so yesterday I stayed home from work, popped myself on the couch and sewed down the binding for this table runner. It is made from mini charm squares, I like to slice them in half and sew them together at quiet times. They make a quick table runner!

A Quilting Retreat

 

So here is my luggage for a one night/two day quilting retreat. That's not bad is it??! I have my ironing board, bathers, extension cords and lots of fabric, so I'm all set!

 

 

This is what the view from my seat looked like for most of Saturday. A friend wanted to make a quilt like this one and so I decided to make one with her. I said to my friend, now be really careful when you unroll your jelly roll, you don't want to get the colours out of order, leave them exactly how they are and sew them in that order. So off she went like a good little girl and sewed them all exactly as they were when they were unravelled. Meanwhile I sew a few of mine in order and then think, oh that green would look better down there and that blue should really be over there. So I started messing mine all up and kept on sewing. It was bit of a weird blend, there was only one true red and heaps of yellowy/greens. I should have pulled a few out, but I was in the zone and kept on sewing.

 

A few hours later here we are with our finished quilt tops. Rows sewn together, pressed, cut, white sashing sewn on, strip rotated and sewn back together. I think my friends looks awesome!!! Mine, I feel a bit meeeeh...

 

 

Even the beautiful location couldn't shake that feeling.

 

Maybe I should quilt a tree over the top of it?? Instead I fold it up and get to work on something else. That night I get out ipad and look at the photos and for a 40 minutes have this in-depth discussion with my room mate about what I could do to make this quilt better. We discussed unpicking the green/yellow bit, but no too tricky with the white sashing. We discussed rainbow squares around the outside with a thinner white sashing? We discussed quilting options to make it pop. And then in a moment of frustration I said, I may as well just chop the thing in half. That was the lightbulb moment! Chop it in half and make two smaller quilts.

 

The first was easy. Just a simple chop and then add the white around the edges. Perfect. Quilt number one finished. Very happy quilter now.

 

Quilt number two needed a little bit of something else. So I did another cut and rotate and sew back in with white sashing. Looks like a landscape. Quilt number two finished. An extremely happy quilter indeed now!

Here is the whole gang with all their work for the weekend.

A Finished Quilt in March?

Well the retreat is this weekend and I have finished the sample quilt for the Jelly Roll Race.

The machine quilting has pulled it a bit.
I must learn to love my walking foot then this wouldn't happen!

I love the texture though. Bring on the weekend!

Go Anti Clockwise!

There is nothing like a deadline, a long weekend and a husband away on a 48 hour fishing trip to get the sewing juices flowing again! Next weekend I am off on a Quilting Retreat, it is to the same place with the same ladies as last year here. I put my hand up and said I would host the jelly roll session and so I will be walking the ladies through making the Jelly Roll Jam 2 Quilt from the free pattern section of the fantastic Fat Quarter Shop. So I "had to" make a sample to show them next weekend. It came together pretty quickly and I was down on the floor with my pins sandwiching it together before I knew it. Even though its a very geometrically pattern, I thought I would do a big circle spiral quilting pattern, just for practice. I really like the effect it creates. So I marked a starting point, put the darning foot on and away I went. Anti clockwise. I didn't realize then I'd be up for a d'oh moment soon. I did the first five ripples of the circle then changed over to my open toe foot, I just can't fall in love with my walking foot, I get better results with a normal open toe foot. So another ten ripples later and I notice I am getting really bunched up at a certain curve in the neck making it a bit tricky to push through, it was supposed to get less bulk in the neck as the circle got bigger, not more. Then the d'oh moment hit me, I should have gone in a clockwise direction.

But I continued on till the quilting reached an edge and then I flipped it around in a clockwise direction. I've just got the binding to go now. Tomorrow is a public holiday here in WA so I'll get it done in no time.

Thanks for all the lovely comments about my blue and green table runner int he last post too. :)

Blue and Green Shouldn't Be Seen? Really??

 

Who said blue and green shouldn't be seen? They wouldn't be comfortable sitting down at my dining room table at the moment! A few weekends ago I gathered all my blue and green solid scraps from my scrap basket. It was starting to look like the sea in there, time for a cull. So I cut them into rough rectangles and then sliced them into a wedge shape. All random, just mix and match. I was trying to make them about 8 to 10 inches long to be trimmed down to 8 inches. I was thinking of a white 1 inch sashing in-between the two lengths but then when it came to laying out the two strips they looked good just butted up. Trimmed off the excess and then sewed it together, added a crisp white boarder and then wolah, top complete. I didn't want to do straight across back and forth straight quilting, so I thought I'd try quilting following the angles of the seams.

 

It measures 18 by 47 inches. Wonder how long the white will stay white on our table? I'm pleased with it and even more pleased that I finished something for 2015!

Our Summer Holiday in the USA - Part 4.

So after the wedding, we woke up the next day, returned the dress and tux to be collected from the concierge dude and then packed our bags and jumped on the plane to head back to Los Angeles for the last leg of our trip. We stayed in Hollywood, a few blocks back from the Walk of Stars strip. Didn't like the strip so much, was full of people hassling you for tours all the time. We did one of those Hop On/Hop Off bus tours one day and that gave us a good view from the top deck of all the antics on the streets below. That was as close as I wanted to get. We did the Warner Brothers Studio tour which was pretty good. Sat on the Friends couch, saw where Ellen parks her car. They had an awesome collection of props and costumes from the Harry Potter movies on display. Milly and I are big Harry Potter fans so that was the highlight of the day for us. We also did a day at Universal Studios. It was a lot like the one in Singapore but that was okay by us as we had a great time last year there! There was a slight delay in getting in as there was a problem with our paperwork, so after 25 minutes of debate at the ticketting window, the only way we would get in would be to pay again. Which we did and kept all the paperwork so we could get a refund when we got back to Australia.

It was an amazing holiday, lots of wonderful memories.

Our Summer Holiday in the USA - Part 3.

So then after San Diego we jumped back on the plane and flew into Las Vegas on a Friday. I was looking forward to "Vegas Baby!" We stayed at the Paris Hotel which was right in the middle of the strip and like being in Paris, Las Vegas is a full on city, Lots of casinos obviously, lots of smoking, lots of hassling when you are walking down the street. Lots of wealth, walking through the foyers of fancy hotels like the Bellagio, the Venetian, Caesars Palace, the opulence was jaw dropping. On the other side we saw the most homeless people in Vegas. Our day trip to the Grand Canyon was unfortunately cancelled due to bad weather. Oh well, next time.

 

The big highlight of our Las Vegas leg of the trip was that Daz and I renewed our wedding vows at the Graceland Chapel. We got remarried by Elvis! It was so funny!! We had the best day. We hired the dress and tux, had a limo pick us all up and drive us to and from the chapel. Elvis himself was hilarious and had us in stitches for the while 15 minute ceremony. He walked me down the isle to Love Me Tender, we all walked back up the isle to Viva Las Vegas. It was awesome. After the ceremony we all had dinner at the very fancy Eiffel Tower Restaurant and then Daz and I went to see Rock of Ages at the Venetian. Due to us still being in our wedding attire, we got upgraded in out seats and free champagne at the bar next door, Daz is a bit worried that he now has to remember two wedding anniversaries! The next morning however it was everything back into our suitcases and off on our last leg of this amazing holiday, Los Angeles!

Back to School for 2015

 

Back to school for everyone this week! Grace is in High School now, year 7!!! Milly is in year 5. As always she is ready to go, eager and enthusiastic while Grace is "Really? Do I have to??"

Our Summer Holiday in the USA - Part 2.

So after the adventures of Anaheim we got on a transfer bus and drove down to San Diego. We then hired a SUV for this park of the trip which gave us some freedom to do what we wanted when we wanted. Here we hit some animal parks, San Diego Zoo, San Diego Safari Park and also Sea World, I'll admit I didn't like the Zoo as much as Singapore Zoo last year. Still the giraffes and panda were worth seeing. Sea World was interesting, Daz went back to the hotel that night and googled all the incidents about Orca whales in captivity.... Then after we had done all our animal parks we went to Legoland! Friends who had been said it wasn't the best but we had an awesome time! We had a great day, came home with a few bags of minecraft lego...

Because we had our own wheels, we were able to get off the beaten tourist trap one morning and I convinced the boys that we had to go via Jo-Ann's! There was no way I could come home from America with no fabric! It was just like a giant Spotlight really just bigger and better. They knew I was coming as they had 40% off all fabric and so I got some Denise Schmidt fabric for $7.49. San Diego got the thumbs up from all of us. But before we knew it our five days were up and it was time to return the hire car and get on the plane for Vegas Baby!

Our Summer Holiday in the USA - Part 1.

We have just come back from an amazing three weeks on the West coast of the USA. I will admit I have nevertheless had much interest in visiting America but we had some such an awesome time, it's a journey I would recommend to anyone. We started our trip with five days down in Anaheim visiting Disneyland. Eight photos don't do our days justice! We rode all the rides, even the scarey California Screaming Roller Coaster in California Adventure Park. It was very cold, we had beanies and five layers of clothing on. We were in Disneyland for New Years Eve which was pretty special, busy too, never qued so much for the bathroom/lunch/a coffee. After Anaheim we went to San Diego, but that is another blog post....

Ending December with a Bang!

Well the school year finishes tomorrow and 2014 has ended rather well for us. Grace graduated from year 6 last week, bring on high school next year! She had a dance on graduation night, so we all got dressed up for that. Then the morning after that was the final whole school assembly for 2014 and Milly scooped up the Citizenship Award for her class as well as an award for music. She did extremely well, we are very proud of both of the girls for a fantastic year.

A Finished Table Runner.

Nothing like a friends birthday to inspire you to finish the binding so you can give them a table runner for their present! Happy birthday Mandy!

WIP Wednesday - A Finished Quilt Top.

I think my sewing mojo may be returning. Fingers crossed.... I have finished the quilt top of the blue and orange squares started back in. I have some blue scraps left over for the backing. It measures about 36 inches square, perfect for the lap of a baby boy due just before Christmas.

Holiday Sewing - A Cuzco Runner.

I managed some sewing in the school holidays just passed. I had already sewn these mini charm squares (Cuzco by Kate Spain) into rows, after cutting them in half. All I had to do was add the sashing, sandwich it and then quilt it. Tick, tick, tick! Then add the binding, another tick. And now it has been sitting ready to hand sew down for over a week. At this rate it will sit there until the next school holidays!

A Bargello Finish!

 

I finished the binding on this runner just in time to enter it in the local Ag Show last month. It picked up a second place for "Quilted Other Item".

 

I pebbled quilted it, leaving every sixth row of colour not quilted so it would pop out.

 

Mum admired it when she was visiting, I think I will send it down for her birthday in October. Wow, my first finished item for 2014!!

Sunday Sewing

 

I did some sewing today. Don't fall off your chair! Just some simple square in squares. Going to do nine of them to make up a simple baby quilt. And of course I realized how much I have missed sewing once I got started, so I am going to try and do just a little bit every few days. Try to anyway....

Fishing!

There is not very much sewing going on here at the moment but there has been a bit of fishing..... On the last week of the school holidays we had an overnight fishing trip with friends to a top secret destination. All destinations are top secret when it involves catching barramundi! We drove through a few water crossings like the one above.

 

It was a long drive and Grace much preferred a nap in the shade of the car to doing any fishing!

Milly however was on fire and caught this cat fish which she wasn't impressed with. "Gross Mum!"

She persisted and then later her line went off and she reeled in a barra all by herself. Daz was giving instructions, "wind in, pull up, pause, wind in, pull up, pause" and Mr D had the net ready, we were not letting him get away.

 

Here is the end result, a beautiful 59cm barra and a smile that says it all. Well done Milly!

 

 

Three Fishermen. This photo shows their interest, Milly is still looking at her fish and Daz and Mr D are looking down river at where the rods are thinking they heard another one go off.

 

And I am saving the best photo for last. After the sun went down and the kids had gone to bed in the tent, my rod went off and look what was on the end! How big is that barra? 80cms long to be exact. It was very heavy, my arms from reeling it in and then holding it up for the photo. It was the best feeling though, I caught an 80cm barra. Not a bad end to the school holidays despite there being no sewing!