National Sewing Machine Day

Apparently today is national sewing machine day so I thought I'd post a few pictures of some of our machines:

We acquired this Canadian machine in 2016.  It's a Little Wanzer made in Hamilton, ON in 1867.  It has the date etched in it.  Fun to have a machine made in Canada's founding year.

A beautiful Raymond No 1 - made in Guelph, ON

A lovely Gardner treadle machine also made in Hamilton ON.

A Singer 15 with the Canadian National Exhibition badge from 1939

A lovely Singer 99 given to us by an older man in our town

The Singer 99 also has the Canadian National Exhibition badge from 1939

My Singer 15-88 treadle machine from 1951 that I use almost daily

Singer 27 made in 1904 exactly like the treadle sewing machine that I learned to sew on.

Just a small sampling of the 150+ sewing machines in our collection :-).  Happy National Sewing Machine day!

Table runner experiments

A few years ago I made a Mexican Star wall hanging and I always wanted to make more blocks with this technique.  I made this table runner with two mini charm packs using 2 1/2" squares.  I found a white fabric with a little black speckle in my stash to use for background.  I thought this would be a good runner to try matchstick quilting.  Here is the first photo with white thread and quilting lines 1/4" apart.

I drew lines 1" apart and used my free motion foot to quilt it on my vintage Bernina 830 and just eyeballed in the 1/2" and 1/4" lines.  The sides are always tricky so I did free motion lines sideways to fill that up :-).

It looked a little pale with white so I braved it and added orange lines in between some of the white ones.  I really like the effect.

The finished runner

I bought 1/2 a yard of the orange for binding, but could just squeeze out the backing as well if I used up all the rest of the mini charms!  When does that ever happen?

Elephant baby quilt

As usual, I'm behind in my blogging LOL.  This quilt was made for a shower a few months back for my niece Becky, who was having a baby girl.  Since our town is known for Jumbo, and Becky was born there, it was appropriate to make an elephant quilt.  this pattern is adapted from Sew Fresh Quilts sew along from a few years back. 

The finished quilt

Mommy and Daddy

..and baby

Found the perfect backing in my stash 😀

Vinyl project pouches

We were shopping in a quilt shop in January when I spotted a sample of the Moda vinyl project pouch.  The free tutorial is here.  It was a lot of fun to make.  I have tons of those cute little mini charm packs and this was the perfect project to make one for myself and one for my sister for her birthday.  She received hers last week so now I can blog about it finally ☺.  I realized I didn't take a picture of them when the binding was stitched down!  The pattern tutorial is well written and it comes together very nicely.

The left one is mine with leftovers of my granddaughter Katie's quilt backing fabric.  The right one is my sister's with fabric from an older row by row year.

mini charm pack squares used in mine

mini charm pack squares used in my sister's

The pouch is very handy to take hand piecing projects along or cut out block pieces to a retreat.  I have already used mine several times.

Woven Selvages

Looking through my photos recently, I realized I'd never blogged about this selvage project which I finished in November 2017.   This had been my leaders/enders project for awhile testing sewing machines for Jake after he repairs them.  A great way of testing a machine on an actual project when precision isn't required.  I cut 5" squares of muslin or leftover light scrap fabric and covered them with the selvages aiming for lighter and darker for every other square.  This pattern is in the book "Quilts from the Selvage Edge" by Karen Griska.  

The wall hanging is the same size as the Glass Tumbling Cubes from the same book done in 2012.  This way I can interchange the hangings on the wall periodically.  I am running out of wall space ☺.

(click on the photo to enlarge for a better view)

close up of the selvages

The finished wall hanging

I added a navy border instead of the selvage border which I found a little too busy.  I echoed the woven design in the border with the quilting. 

The finished quilt is hanging above my coffee station in my sewing room

Elgin Piecemaker's Challenge

Every year the Elgin Piecemaker's quilt group does a challenge.  This year it was a "Fold it - Snip It - Rip it - Pass it - Make it" challenge organized by Deb and Joanne.  We had to bring a yard of batik fabric to the October meeting as well as a pair of fabric scissors.  We stood in a circle and clipped our yard in half and ripped it, keeping one half and passing the other half to our neighbour on the right.  We continued doing this til we had 7 different fabrics, each half the size of the previous one.  There was only one rule:  at least one piece of each of the 7 batiks must be used in our project.  We could add any fabrics and make whatever we wished.  

I had a pattern in my to do box called "Fierce Ladies" by Eye Candy Quilts and decided to add lots of my batik scraps to make a colourful rendition of this pattern which was inspired by those riotously colourful Victorian houses set in the hills of San Francisco.  This pattern was the mini version and finished at 18" x 24".   (Click on the photos for a larger view.)

The original 7 batiks I received plus a white tone on tone batik I had in my stash which I used for background

Back of my wallhanging.  I bought these fabrics on a trip to PEI a few years ago.  Since the pattern was California houses, a beach theme was appropriate.

While spraying the white parts with water to remove the markings for quilting, the blue of this roof ran!  I got a lot of it out but added rick rack on a few of the roofs to cover it up ☺

The quilting suggestion was on the pattern

Our grand reveal meeting was held at the end of March.  Here are the projects that the other ladies made.  They were all amazing and the judges had a very difficult time choosing two winners!  And, we all had a hard time with our viewer's choice vote!!

Yvonne T's wallhanging

Pat P's wallhanging

Julie's bag (the other colours were in the bottom but somehow I didn't get a picture of that)

Chris's table runner

We wondered if Chris had not used all seven fabrics, but one was hiding on the back ☺

Gail made a bag to carry her handwork in while traveling

Joanne made fabric with lots of batiks added to her colours and made this sunburst of diamonds

Jacqui's  houses

Heather's sewing themed wallhanging has her original fabrics under the machine

Pat O's butterfly pillow

Anne's table runner or wallhanging

Diane's mini paper pieced mariner's compass

Deb burned the midnight oil finishing her table runner!

Our judges, Lorna and Heather holding up Beth P's appliqued fish

Diane won viewer's choice

Julie won runner up for her bag

Deb won 1st place for her lovely modern table runner. 

 We already have two volunteers to challenge us for our next challenge in the fall!  Can't wait to see what they have planned for us.

Dr. Suess baby quilt - February UFO Finish

The second Dr. Suess one block wonder quilt from the panel below was finished this week and delivered to a new baby at his shower on Thursday :-).  This was definitely a very fun quilt to work on.  I quilted it with diagonal lines 1/4" away from the seams which worked very well.  The seams are all pressed open on these OBW quilts so you don't want to stitch in the ditch. I am linking up with The Crafty Quilter for her February UFO challenge.

(Click on the photos to enlarge for a better view.)

original panel produced enough hexagons for 3 baby quilts

close up of the quilting lines

Finished quilt

I had a Dr. Suess fabric in my stash which worked great for the backing.