Monday Marcy 17, 2014

Monday, March 17, oh, my, I just realized it's St. Patrick's day...but for me, it is the 4th anniversary of when our missionary, KayLynn, arrived home from Peru!
These are the quilt blocks of my Spinning Spools quilt, completed as much as possible and packed up waiting for additional fabric to come in the mail.  The original quilt is about 60" x 60" and is made up of 36 blocks.  That is not big enough for a queen sized quilt, so I made as many blocks as I had fabric for and have 69 blocks completed.  This morning I laid blocks out and considered how many I would need to make the larger size.  I am going to make a total of 100 blocks.  They go quickly and the fabric is so bright and cheery (fabric line is Nana's Pantry by Connecting Threads) that they don't seem to be much work.  I do like appliqué and am happy with how they are turning out.  I have to add a little lesson here that I learned.
I like to appliqué using the fusible interfacing method.  I needed to buy more so, last Thursday, coupons in hand, I purchased 2 packages, 1 yard each, for about $3.45 per package.  That wasn't nearly enough so, after going out to dinner with Jim on Friday night, we went to the fabric store to purchase more.  I picked up 3 more packages, hoping that would be enough.  I happened to pass by the interfacing by the yard display and saw that that price was $.99 per yard.  I sent Jim to put the packages back while I stood in line to get my purchase cut.  Then I noticed that there was a sale sign saying that it was half price!  Needless to say, I stocked up.  I will have to be more careful and compare prices between yardage and packaged products.

This is what else I have been working on  today.  The quilt top is  just a regular jelly roll quilt that I am making as a surprise for a loved one. It is completed but can't be quilted yet because I am short on the backing fabric and have to wait for my new order to arrive.  While looking at various quilts on Pinterest and Google Images, I decided to add some appliqué to the quilt just to jazz it up.  I couldn't help but think I was doing something my mom would do.  She is always going the extra mile while I'm usually not one to step out of the box very often.  It was a little time consuming, but now that it's all done, I'm very glad I put in the extra time and work.  Thank's Mom, for your example.

These are a couple of new additions to my sewing room...a new Oliso Pro iron and Gingher cutting sheers.
I have been fighting spitting irons for way too long so took the plunge and invested in this new iron.  I LOVE it.  I purchased it on Target.com and took advantage of Steven's employee discount.  I have seen them on sale on the Connecting Threads web site.  This one is perfect for a quilter because it doesn't start cooling off for 30 minutes.  I can sew and then turn around and have a hot iron when I need it and not always be waiting for the iron to warm up.

My new Gingher 7" cutting sheers...where have you been all my life?!!!  Armed with a 50% off coupon, I took advantage of the opportunity to buy these wonderful scissors.  I have had them less than a week, but I have really seen a difference.  Again, I can be a little more like my mother  because these are the scissors I remember her having when I was a young girl at home.

Eventually, when you sew as much as I do, you can wear out a sewing machine! That's what I finally did.  I have sewed on a Brother PQ1500S for 10 years.  I dearly loved that sewing machine and would absolutely recommend it to any one ( very reasonably priced on Amazon).  It was perfect for piecing quilts and for all the machine quilting that I did.  Something that needs to be noted is that it only sews straight stitches.  No decorative stitches of any kind.
When the machine got too tired for me to be satisfied with the quality any more, Jim generously invested in a new sewing computer for me.  This is my new Bernina B 750 Quilters Edition sewing computer.  I have had it since August.  It has been a real learning curve for me to get use to this new machine but we are getting to be better and better friends.  I have experimented with some of the decorative stitches.  I love to be able to go from straight stitches to the blanket stitch for appliqué  with a tap on the screen.  I always had to have a second machine for my decorative stitches but was able to give that to my mother to use now.