Wedding quilt for Justine and Michael

We were invited to a wedding for two young friends last week. I had this quilt top in my UFO drawer and decided to quilt it up for Michael and Justine's wedding.  This is a spinning four patch pattern where you cut four identical repeats of fabric, layer them exactly, cut into strips and then cut into squares. Each set of squares can be arranged in four different ways.  I sashed them in yellow, blue and green kona cotton strips without any extra borders.  Unfortunately, I didn't have any of the original fabric left to put in the backing.  It was quilted with a spiral/flower on my domestic, vintage Bernina 830.

Finished quilt

one of my favourite blocks

the spiral flower quilting

finished quilt

backing leftover from another quilt

A great sewing machine for our collection....

This past March, we were asked to do a trunk show for the Chatham ON Canada quilt guild, which is about an hour's drive from our place.  We took along several of our antique and vintage sewing machines as well as a couple of buckets of quilts to show what can actually be sewn on old machines.  There was a reporter at the meeting from a local newspaper and he asked if he could take my picture with an old machine.  We had a good chat and he took a few notes and then said he was going to stay for a few minutes.  He ended up staying for the whole presentation and did a really nice write up.  You can read the article here.  The story was picked up in our home newspaper as well as in several other cities in the area.

The article mentions a framed photo we have of Jake, when he was two years old, trying to take his Mom's old sewing machine apart!  This is the only photo we have of the machine and it's backwards.  We asked Jake's Mom, but she had no recollection of the machine or the brand at all.  We would love to add this machine to our collection :-).  We did see one on eBay several years ago, but it went way above our price range to purchase it.  Who knows, maybe we'll run across it at a yard sale someday :-). 

Jake at 2 years old already tinkering with old machines

That article in the paper resulted in a number of calls about sewing machines that we may wish to purchase.  Most of them were great machines, but did not fit into our collection.  There were so many millions of machines made that there is just no way you can get them all.  However, one phone call, from a gentleman in our own community resulted in this very fun addition as we focus on machines with Canadian connections.  This little beauty is a Singer 99 with the 1939 Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto badge on it.  We are in the process of servicing it and getting it running smoothly.  I hope to sew something on it with a Canadian connection.

Singer 99

Canadian National Exhibition Toronto, ON 1939