Sisters

On the heels of the final craft fair Mindy, my youngest sister, came for a visit. This wasn't just any visit but a sewing  expedition. After a couple years of working on several quilts, she was in the final stretch and thought she needed help. Our oldest sister, Jane, is the real quilter among us and even had a long-arm machine for a decade but that is now gone so we needed to finish these quilts in a more practical way. Add to that a move from one house to another and Mindy knew she had to get this stuff out of the house so she announced her trip dates and we figured we could work out the details.

The Salem Covenant Church annual craft fair was well attended and with steady sales I ended up in good shape. All of the Minnesota Twins and Vikings  hot mitts were sold and new ideas were generated so the day was a success but exhausting. We managed to get everything home and put away, floors vacuumed and bathrooms cleaned, venison thawed for the stew I was preparing for the next day so we called it quits and fell into bed. Mindy had been texting me while she was staying with friends and family on her way from Illinois to Minnesota via Iowa and says she has some surprises for me. Oh oh, I hope those are going to be good surprises and it turns out they were.

Along with six large bins/tubs of fabric, she also brought along four sewing machines. We spent Sunday afternoon looking through all of the bins and dividing everything up into piles: donate, recycle, and keep. She had a whole bin full of jean legs. Yes, just the legs. It seems there was a project several years ago where she made these cute aprons out of jeans but the legs weren't part of it so they were save for a future use. Most of them went into the recycle bags that were eventually taken to a place that would take any fiber to use for insulation materials. I cut up some damaged jeans and overalls to use for sample sewing so I had a nice stack of them and the rest went for recycling. She used men's shirts for the quilt blocks and had many of the parts left over. They also got cut up for sample sewing so what was left, mainly collars and cuffs, needed to be recycled. But there were whole nests of great fabric in creams and pinks from previous projects that were finished and are now in my house instead of hers.

What about the four sewing machines? Mindy was undecided what to do with them but she already has two at home she was keeping so the fate of these machines was up in the air. I tried out each one, none needed real intense help, just cleaning and adjusting. Here are the results:

Singer CG 550: handled jeans just fine!

Kenmore 385-11607: pretty basic stuff but runs well

Brother SQ9185: decorative stitches but not a "quilter" machine as she hoped

 During the last few hours she decided to take the Singer Simple, not pictured above, home to give to a neighbor and leave the Brother SQ9185 with me since it was just a little too fancy and she probably wouldn't use it anyway. Those words are not in my vocabulary but this was her decision, not mine. On to the quilts!

Using simple squares cut from men's shirts, she placed them in a diagonal pattern that ended up looking great. There was a sheet attached for the backing but she didn't want a filler so used a simple stitched-in-the-ditch method to join the front and back. I found some similar fabric and made up the bias binding and we used a snap-on binding foot to make the whole process easier. Here's the result:

Simple squares in an interesting pattern

Backed with a sheet

With only one quilt left and it was only noon of the second day, we laid out the sheet she was using for the backing, cotton batting for the filler (thank you, Jane!) laid the top on and pinned like crazy:

All pinned up

At this point we should have also used basing stitches across the whole thing but didn't think we had the time for it but that ended up costing us more time in the end. There's always lessons to learn and now we both know it takes more than safety pins for a quilt that large. I pulled out my Pfaff 1222 with the IDT (Integrated Dual Transportation) as a system-built walking foot, rolled up one side to put to the right of the presser foot and needle and she went to work:

Mindy hard at work on the Pfaff 1222

By dinner time all of the longer lengths were sewn and over half of the shorter rows were done. She treated me to dinner and we bought packaged bias binding. It was a struggle using that much stiffer fabric that is used in the binding and I remembered why I always make my own so that was another lesson learned. Mindy was a real trooper and got it done, the corners were mitered, and we both rejoiced.

Finally done: love those pinwheels!

It was late, we were both tired, she had a long day of driving ahead of her, and I had to return to my full-time job so we called it a night. In the midst of all of this she also ended up with a dead car battery and it took her hours longer to return home due to construction outside of Beloit, but she did get home and we called her trip to the wintry north a huge success. She's not going to be making any more quilts, she says, but what a great result she got from her foray into the world of quilting. She eyed my sergers but I didn't try to send her home with one since she's downsizing but just maybe... but that's for another sister weekend!

Mindy showing off her wonderful work