Mitered corner practise

A quick and easy table topper can be made with a FQ and a metre of border fabric. It's a great way to practise making perfect mitered corners :-). I recently finished a table topper and a bonus mini topper and 2 coasters out of a lovely striped border fabric. The added bonus is that you can cut the FQ down to size to make it fit whatever border fabric you have :-)

Once the corners were mitered, and the excess triangles cut off, I happened to see my 60 degree ruler on the table and got the brainstorm to cut triangles to make a little hexagon shaped piece. As an added bonus, the little mat fits perfectly into the center of the square table topper for a different look. There was a narrow strip of border fabric left, which produced two little coasters also cut with the 60 degree ruler:

This is also a great project to practise some different free motion quilt patterns. I quilted the center with flower motifs:

I tried out some spirals on the center of the mini topper inspired by a new quilt book I picked up recently: "Machine Quilting Solutions" by Christine Maraccini.

Here is the back which showed the spirals better on a photo:

The spirals are easy to echo in a narrow border:

Quilting on the coaster:

I gave this set as a wedding gift with an ice cream scoop and waffle cone holders. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of those as they were purchased between the ceremony and reception :-). The colours matched really nicely!

Check out this beauty!

We spent another enjoyable afternoon and evening working in the garage restoring and testing antique sewing machines. Check out this beautiful Singer 115 full rotary sewing machine. I think this is the nicest machine we've ever come across...the decals are near perfect and it's very shiny:

Check out the shine on this awesome machine:

These are called 'wing' decals - it's even made in Canada!

The end plate is in mint condition:

I did some test sewing on it, working on a queen sized One Block Wonder quilt! With machines like this, we don't consider this work at all - it is all play getting these pretty old machines back in working order.

Sewing in the garage!

I spent the afternoon today sewing in the garage :-). I've been working on painting some patio furniture that our neighbour made a few weeks ago. Jake was fixing sewing machines in the garage and we spent a pleasant morning working and chatting together :-). While the paint dried, I tested the sewing machines that were ready and brought my sewing to the garage so we could continue working together. Here is my sewing table set up to test a Centennial 15-90 sewing machine that belongs to a quilting friend:

Chair parts are drying while I'm sewing :-)

Threading the machine....

Jake is working on restoring a Featherweight we picked up recently:

He even made me a coffee and brought two Oreo cookies to go with it. We are enjoying our summer vacation working together on our shared hobby!

Antique Quilt find

On Canada Day, we went to visit our son in Leamington. I went yard saleing with his girlfriend and parents. It is always fun to go to yard sales in a different area! At a neighbourhood yard sale, I walked up to a table and spotted a quilt all neatly folded up. It looked like it was in good shape. There was a price tag on it for $1.00!! Yes, you read that right...one loonie!!!! I didn't even open it up, but gave her the dollar and wisked it out of there in a hurry LOL. It is in good shape, with a little fading of the colours here and there. It looks like it's been on a bed with the sun shining on one side of it. It is pieced by machine, but entirely handquilted. It has a really interesting design. Here is a closeup of the block:

The whole quilt:

Isn't it pretty?