My 50th Dear Jane block

We had a get together with 5 of us in the area to work on Dear Jane blocks and I finished my 50th block!! This is K 2 Grandpa's Chickens. I thought the polka dot fabric would be perfect for chickens :-).

The official count is now 50-0-0-802 meaning 50 blocks finished, 0 triangles, 0 corners, 802 pieces.

Another Psalm block..thanks to the Olympics!

I finally finished hand piecing this block for my Psalms quilt. It's been prepped for ages, but finally sat down to watch the Olympics a little bit this week and got some hand sewing in. This is Psalm 66, Fireside Visitor.

Vintage Thursdays!

My quilt buddy, Nancy mentioned an interesting blog on her site Confessions of an Apron Queen and since I love vintage items, I thought I'd try and post a few items on Thursdays. Now, this is not strictly a vintage item, but a reproduction fabric print which I picked up at Cherished Pieces. As soon as I saw this print, I fell in love with it and bought a yard of it. I haven't a clue what I'm going to do with it!

Since that's not technically a vintage item :-), here is a sewing machine that I recently received as a gift from a fellow collector. It's from the 1950's, 1960's era and sews very nicely. It's a basic zigzag and straight stitch machine with a drop in bobbin and also has the capacity to insert cams in the top for different embroidery stitches. I have lots of cams in my collection and hope to sit down one of these days and have fun with them.


I just love the curved front cabinet and the detail on the cabinet legs. There's also a matching stool with the same detail in the legs.

Next Thursday, I'll post a picture of a green sewing machine :-).

Strawberry Lemonade

Finally got to sewing this week and made a table topper for a wedding gift for a colleague of my husband. The pattern was in the Fabric Trends magazine Summer 2008 issue. It took me awhile to find the fabrics for it, but I'm happy with the results. I bought some Amy Butler fabrics and then had quite the time finding some tone on tone fabrics to blend with them...this topper definitely is not from one line of matching fabrics :-)! The center square, the background of the appliqué leaves, the striped inner border and the yellow squares in the outside border are Amy Butler. The red is a civil war, the yellows are 30's repro, the dark outside border is a batik and there's an XOXOXO my kitty fabric in there as well. It was pieced on a 1952 Singer Featherweight and quilted on my trusty 15-88 treadle and my vintage Bernina 807 minimatic.

If you do attempt to make this table topper, there are a few mistakes in the center square. I emailed Fabric Trends and they were going to put a correction on their webpage. If you can't find it, email me and I can let you know which pieces are wrong.

The yellow on this picture is a little washed out:

Forgot to mention the green print in the corner square..it's a Japanese!

I had this basket weave fabric in my stash which worked perfectly for the backing:

I found these napkins and straws at IKEA a few weeks ago and figured they'd go with the table topper perfectly! The flash distorted the colours a bit, but the colours are actually almost identical to the fabrics!

The top before it was quilted:

After quilting:

G 8 Justin's Comet & trying out Inklingo

Justin's Comet was started while at a Dear Jane get together in Oakville, Ontario. I handpieced this block and finished it on vacation. This is the block that Nancy challenged us to do by using a stripe. I only had a boring stripe, so when I found this striped FQ with fancy paisley's I wondered if it would work. I couldn't quite get 8 exact repeats, but did get two sets of four identical pieces. It took me longer to cut these diamonds than to sew the block together :-). I am pleased with the way it turned out.

Pressing the back trying to follow Linda Franz's instructions :-):

We actually got to meet Linda Franz at the gathering and had a great time getting to know her! She gave each of us two sample pieces of Inklingo printed on two different colours of batik fabrics. While on vacation, I made this grandmother's flower garden using all the purple hexagons and one of the light blue ones. What fun and how easy is this! Of course it was all printed out on the fabric for me by Linda LOL...now to try out actually printing on fabric. I received a wonderful autographed copy of Inklingo for my birthday from my friends, Lynn and Amy and need to take some time to try the printing. Sure saves a lot of seam marking for hand piecing!!


Linda also showed us how to press the seams at the back. Works slick!

Thanks Linda! It was also great meeting Monkey in person!!

...and more...and the machines I sewed on!

I finished another DJ block today testing another sewing machine :-). Fun way to get needed work done as well as getting a few more blocks finished. This is K3 Seven Sisters...no idea where the Seven Sisters come in! I received this fabric from my Dear Jane secret pal. The outside row is supposed to be white, but I liked it with the blue better.

This is the beautiful Singer free arm Featherweight that I used to sew this block this morning! It purrs like a kitten and sews a perfect straight stitch. If you are interested in seeing more detailed pictures of this machine click here .

The blocks I posted yesterday were sewn on these machines...a beige Singer Featherweight that also sews like a dream:

...a 1953 Singer 15-88 treadle...made in Canada...great machine!

..and another Singer 15-88 treadle from 1955...also a wonderful machine! Do you get the impression that I love these wonderful old Singer sewing machines? LOL


I'm off to try out another Singer...this time a 201 which will go into a treadle eventually...I'm going to use it with a temporary handcrank attachment...hope to have another block to post tomorrow!

Finally some more Dear Jane blocks!

I finally got busy and sewed a few more Dear Jane blocks! I had to test sew on several machines that we will be selling, so figured this is a good excuse. After all, to thoroughly test a machine, it's much better to sew an actual project than just scrap fabric, right? That's my excuse LOL. Here is H 7 Bennington Star pieced on a 15-88 Singer treadle machine. Stitches are wonderful!

J 6 Granny Weaver sewn on another 15-88 Singer treadle:

J 7 Chicken Tracks sewn on a beige or tan Singer Featherweight. This machine also does a great job with these little 1" strips and squares:


This is C 5 Eye of the Cyclone. I finished this one quite awhile ago, but can't find it on my blog. I hand pieced this one, and did the white section in two pieces so that the curve would go all the way around the 'cyclone'. The only problem was, I stitched on the wrong side of the pencil line and you can actually see the pencil line on three of them! I will try to take the seam in slightly on those pieces to see if that works. Or try to erase the marks. The center seams don't quite line up either, so I'll try to fix that as well...then again..finished is better than perfect, right? :-)