Panel Quilting

 I love it when a concept in my head actually turns out better than expected and there are days when this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. I have been browsing around to find ideas for how to include a large panel in a quilt and just haven't come up with any really great ideas. The panel I've been saving is not so much pricey, it's the fabrics I'm putting with it that are so I don't want to mess it up. Along comes another panel, bought at a thrift store, that gave me the push I needed to actually dream up panel quilt ideas of my own.

While browsing one of my favorite thrift stores, I spied a panel that said something I wanted to keep:

Center panel with 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

There were about eight of them and even though I was tempted to buy more, reason kicked in and I went out the door with only one. Showing it off to friends later I noticed it wasn't cut even on one side and that was going to be a problem so I went back the same day and traded it out for a better one. It didn't languish long when I got out block patterns and tried out various color combinations, as you can see from the block next to the panel above. Here's a close up of my experimentation:

Color combinations

The white or cream background was nice but just too washed out. When I tried a print as the main color you can see that it's so busy you cannot see the pattern.  Since I was using a 10" layer cake stack of fabrics (the colors were really great with the panel colors), I went with one of the dominant colors for a turquoise main color with the others as supporting fabrics. There was too much red/pink to my liking so my husband suggested I try more yellow. I had to look in my stash of fabrics to find a few more that would coordinate well but in the end that was what worked.

Mock up for borders

With my daughters' help in color coordinating, I added the blue and brown inner borders but when it was done it just didn't look complete so she suggested another brown border and that was exactly what was needed. I found a brown print in my stash that would work for the backing and I was on a roll. Deciding how to quilt the various areas was really fun with an outline of the large botanical elements on the panel, outline the word "love", free motion designs on the blue and brown borders, but what about those big 12" blocks? I moved to a walking foot and stitched in the ditch on one side of each V pattern. With only twenty blocks it wasn't too tedious even if I did have to take out stitching once in awhile due to puckering on the backing. Once I got to the final border I got excited to mimic the straight diagonal lines of the blocks by making a diamond grid along the final edge. There was even enough brown fabric left to bind the whole thing! I love it when I don't have to buy anything new and for this 76" square project I only had to purchase the turquoise solid. Here's the quilt I took to First Quilter's to show off as well as get some advice:

Almost done!

I shared with them how I wanted to add stitches in the panel area so it would wash well and not bunch up and I got two suggestions. I added an outline of a dove in the center of the words and also added some flourishes around the lines of text where needed. It worked out  with no spaces larger than the 8" required for spacing by the batting manufacturer. 

Which machine did I use? For this project I started on a Janome Skyline 3 that was wonderful for piecing but when it came time for the free motion sewing the Janome didn't have feed dogs that dropped so I moved to a Bernina Artista 200. While that was great for free motion, when I needed to use a walking foot I moved to the Elna Quilting Queen 7300 with its built in walking foot. I love all three machines but think the Janome is going to be listed for sale and the Bernina was only bought so I could learn the embroidery system. More about those things later because we are off camping again to give me a bit of relief from sewing. 

We do have some sad news: our beloved cat, Meg, was finally put down a couple weeks ago, just shy of her 19th birthday. She was my sewing companion many times sitting on the back of the chair seat with me, trying to vie for my attention. Here's a final photo of the quilt and one of our Meg. May this quilt give someone joy as Meg did for us.

Grand finale

Meg, our quilting cat

Growing Older with Sewing Machines

 Many people ask where I find my sewing machines and I usually tell them I troll Craigslist, resell shops, trade-in, and new friends in sewing. Lately I've been the recipient of machines and sewing supplies from those who can no longer sew due to failing eyesight, physical limitations, and moving to a care facility. I first reported on finding an Elna Quilting Queen in the post Queen for a Day where failing eyesight forced the owner to sell her very fine sewing machine. I continue to use this machine and I'm considering keeping it.

About a month ago I answered an ad about sewing supplies in a storage shed and got in touch with a gentleman whom I met at a nearby storage facility. This all sounds a bit sketchy but we met in broad daylight and I sent a quick text to one of my daughters to tell her where I was and what I was doing just in case I was never heard from again. No joke: I take precautions whenever necessary. As it turned out, I got to look through the boxes and decide which ones to haul home and which ones I could not use and it was only one flat fee. Here's where it gets sweet: the owner had a trailer and would bring them right to my house. Deal! Instead of the 15 boxes he thought were available, I ended up with 24 boxes and still left file cabinets of patterns behind. He told the story of his mother and how she made doll clothes and was way deep into crafts. She died over a year ago and those boxes had been stored for at least ten years and they were ready to clear them out. I actually love a project like this so I got busy and sorted through the boxes and made piles: sell, keep, Textile Center Garage Sale, garbage. I found some nice books, zippers, seam roll, tailors ham and point board, quilting grids, cool fabric, fabric paint, and so many other sewing items.

That's a lot of sorting!

One of the most amazing things was a whole bolt of white terrycloth that was dirty and stained on the top folded edge. I serged the cut edges, sprayed the stains, soaked in hot water with a detergent booster, and washed it up. It turned out fantastic! That's 12 yards of decent quality fabric for stuffed animals, bibs, robes, or whatever I can dream up. My sister Sue always comes up with great ideas so I frequently tap into her creative mind for additional uses.

Just this week I answered an ad for a giveaway of a serger and other sewing supplies. I met a sweet woman who was moving to a different apartment in a senior center and knew she needed to really get serious about what she should keep and find a new home for unused items. Due to an ongoing shoulder problem she could no longer sew and was clearing out her sewing room. I was to get a dress form,

Dress Form

Elna serger in a Koala cabinet, various sewing supplies, and an office chair. While we tried to figure out how to get everything on a flatbed cart, I spied her Janome sewing machine and asked if she was selling it also. She was but had no offers so I bought it from her, including two lights and the table it was on.

Janome Skyline S3

I brought home quite the haul, including some fantastic fabric that was high quality and rather recently bought.

Fabric waiting to be sewn up

While we boxed and chatted, I told her about my sewing life and she said she was glad to know her items were going to be put to good use. What a sweet woman and one I could learn some life lessons from.

During all of this we got a new shed that included a cement pad so our yard is a wreck with beaten down grass and no rain to bring it back to life but no rain also meant all of the work was done on time. With help from a daughter and grandson, it has now received two coats of paint and is ready for an electrician to install a line. My husband helped our neighbor build a ramp (thanks, Bob!) so we are almost finished. Will sewing machines find their way into the shed? Stay tuned to the further adventures of the Sewing Machine Mavin.

New shed

Patience with Memory

My husband claims I'm not patient enough but I disagree. In this post I'm going to tell you about waiting for two and a half years to get a sewing machine part replaced. In my book, that's patience. It all started with a mere $6 purchase of a Janome Memory Craft 3000. No cords but for only $6 how could I go wrong? Oh, so many ways! First off, the power cord and foot control cost an additional $50 but that didn't seem too bad. When they arrived I tried to find out if it even worked and it not only worked, it stitched really nice: quiet, consistent, a very nice sewing machine until I tried to change the stitch length. Nothing. I tried to change the stitch width: nothing. The buttons would push but didn't work. Taking it all apart, the board that controls these functions was, of course, a maze of soldered connections and some of them had failed. You can't get these boards so I put the sewing machine in deep storage and hoped I might learn something down the road that might help in the repair or could use it as a parts machine.

I stumbled upon the Janome MC3000 again while cleaning out and moving sewing machines around and this time I checked to see if parts might be available and, to my shock, I could buy a new K-board. The price was steep so I thought I'd just wait and see if I could catch a sale. Missing the 20% off sale for Black Friday, I did manage to get it for 15% off in the next month. I was so excited to be able to finally get this machine to run but here's what I found when I opened the package:

K-board with broken section on left

One end was snapped off! You can see the screen is also wonky with a blacked out portion so this wasn't going to work. I contacted the company, sent back photos of the packaging, a mere padded envelope with a bubble wrapped sleeve, and they sent me a new board:

New K-board intact

I've taken the old one apart so many times, checking for model numbers and such, that it was easy to pull all of this apart and get it back together. Here's the original board:

Removed K-board

What I noticed later was how black the buttons were and the new one was very white. Age? Was it in worse shape than I realized? All of the functions seemed to work except for those two buttons but it might have been worse that I thought. Now to see how it all worked together and, with much fiddling with the tension I could now get this stitch sample:

Janome Memory Craft 3000 stitch sample

Pretty good, huh?I am very satisfied with this repair and sewing machine with its new lease on life. It wasn't cheap but it was within reason and such a good machine at that:

Janome Memory Craft 3000

It still sews very quietly, free arm, front storage compartment, thirty different stitches, needle up/down, needle threader, printed out manual, and now you know it has a brand new board and cords. This was very satisfying and someone will get a very reliable sewing machine, solid, and a great sewing experience. Whew!

Christmas finally got taken down since we are having below zero temps and the Christmas tree was in the porch. The porch is only heated via a space heater and needs to be closed off for a month or so. That entailed sorting through everything before putting it away since we decided to have a garage sale this summer and no time like the present to decide which things were no longer needed or wanted. There's a box of fabric, too, and with the Textile Center Garage Sale coming up in April it will be a time for cleaning out. Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day so I'm home and getting ready for my 93 year old mother-in-law to come for lunch. This is always a joy as she likes to get out and is so appreciative of anything we do. Might we each have such sunny dispositions and especially at her age!

Windfall

This blog puts me in touch with so many different people and some write to me with questions about their machines, some who want to buy one of my sewing machines, but this tale is about Erin who wanted to sell some "extra" sewing machines. Extra? I'm not sure I know what that means in Sewing Machine Mavin's world. There are no extras, just multiples. But Erin had sewing machines she knew she wasn't going to keep for one reason or another and proposed a group purchase. It was too good to pass up but I tried to sweeten the deal by telling Erin if she drove all the way to my house, instead of meeting part way, I would give her a tour of my sewing machines. It was a deal so we set up a time and then the countdown began. Someone was going to come into my basement and see what a mess I work in? That wasn't going to happen so I got to work in cleaning and reorganizing my machines and bins of fabric. It didn't help that I stopped at a garage sale and picked up another bin of fabric the day before. I had that bin ... but then I had all of that fabric to find homes for. This is the season for sewing up new items for the coming craft fairs so my hope was to have some of the fabric sewn up but for now it needed a new home.

In the meantime, while packing up her car and rearranging the sewing machines, she found two more for me, no additional charge, so now I was almost tingly with anticipation: how broken were the broken cases? How rare or expensive were the missing parts? Who was getting the better deal? Let's just see what happened.

Because this was a week after the garage sale, we still had some tables set up so when Erin arrived we just put them out on sturdy tables. One Kenmore, another Brother, a few no-names, a New Home, several Singers: we stopped and counted several times to see if they were all out of her car. It reminded me of a dog giving  birth to a litter of puppies: is she done yet? Are there more in there? Finally all ten were accounted for and we went over each one and its possible problems. Here's what I got: Kenmore 158-1320, Brother 1241,  Signature URR-988C, Montgomery Wards URR-385A, New Home 108, Janome 325-BBS, Helvetica (Singer 15 clone), Singer 237, Singer Merritt 1872, and a Singer 401A. Only a few needed cases or tables and missing parts were nominal. I think I scored big, Erin is glad to claim part of her basement back so it was a win-win.

After seeing what was in the garage, Erin was delighted to see how I managed to put so many sewing machines into such a small space. We fired up the White Rotary in the Martha Washington cabinet, got the treadle going, admired the decals on my Singer 99 handcrank, and she even got to see the Necchi in its hide-away cabinet:

Necchi Mira

Necchi compact cabinet: front pulls out to reveal a chair and storage

We did go downstairs and maybe she was appalled but she was a gracious guest and admired my many machines and the fabric that was intended to sew on them. Since she is a quilter and not a garment sewer, her interest was in the straight stitch models but I'm always fascinated by the decorative stitches and the stitch quality of the different machines. She did spy the Kenmore 158-1040 in its rose embossed case so we got it out to admire. Erin is a great Kenmore fan and had never seen this cute 3/4 sized machine and was pretty entranced with it.

Kenmore 158-1040

We also got out the Elna Lotus models, another 3/4 sized machine, and marveled at the ingenuity of how it all fit together. Maybe this all comes as a balance to her long arm quilting machine, a pretty large operation, to see these 3/4 sized machines that can sew but on a much smaller scale.

Elna Lotus, a 3/4 sized sewing machine

An hour had gone by and she needed to get back on the road and I needed to get back to my job at hand so we parted with a final photograph of Erin with some of her sold sewing machines:

Erin with a final goodbye to her sewing machines (why does she look so happy?)

You just never know where these stories are going to take you, do you? I'm up for an adventure and this time Erin and her extra sewing machines provided me with a reason to clean up my act but to show off a little bit, too. Thanks, Erin, for the new batch of projects and the hope of future sewers.

Pink Princess

There are advantages to "being in the business" when I find lost and lonely sewing machines. I know what to look for, those to avoid (Singer Touch & Sew), and when to grab and run to my car before the gem gets away. It also helps when parts are missing because I know how expensive it could be to replace those parts or how cheap. Today we are going to look at a sad little Janome 344 in pink!

Janome 344

She was sitting on a shelf at one of the local thrift stores but didn't have a foot control. I thought I might have one that would fit but that's usually only a $25 item, not huge but could be a deal breaker. It was missing all accessories including a foot, and bobbin case so there wasn't going to be much testing it out. I went home, checked online for the model and type of foot control it would need and I figured I could go back on Wednesday when senior citizens get 25% off. Sure enough, it was still on the shelf so I pulled out two foot controls I brought from home and got one to fit. It has a nice built in handle so I carried it over to an outlet and turned it on: beautiful sound. I happily brought it home and got it cleaned up. Then we start to notice the flaws: she has a rusty needle plate! And it wasn't just missing the bobbin case but almost the whole mechanism. Good thing I have many, many parts so I got to work:

Bobbin area before

Bobbin with hook and retaining ring in place

Bobbin with casing inserted that holds the actual bobbin

One of the photos isn't very clear but I think you can see the progression of empty to full. Next came the rust on the needle plate. I had the most success with a razor blade and scraping the rust off until it was smooth to the touch. It still shows two marks but is not going to snag the fabric.

There are a nice variety of stitches, nothing exciting but it does have stretch stitches and a four step buttonhole. I'm pretty excited to get this modern but basic sewing machine and will sell it to someone young who doesn't want the weight of an older model. It's probably 20 years old with metal framework and back but plastic on the front. Janome is known to make pretty decent sewing machines and this one surely is. And it is pink...

Sold the White sewing machine in the zebra print case also to a nice man who is going to learn to sew. His teacher came along and tried it all out and claimed it was a very nice and smooth sewing machine so they walked out happy. I was a bit sad to see it go because it was so very nice but it needed a new home.

Black White model is pristine

More appointments on Saturday for some good sewing machines, a Singer 301 in a trapezoid case and a learn to sew Singer that will be going to a family man who needs it for something specific that he is going to bring along.

We are happy at Sewing Machine Mavin's house today with things getting fixed and machines moving out the door. Now if I could only figure out the Pfaff 262 and 332 this weekend.

Burlap Craze

It's always an adventure to see where some of my sales and projects will take me and today I'm going to tell you a story of a woman and her project in Haiti. Ellen got in touch with me to purchase a couple Kenmore sewing machines. Her requirements were that they were easy to use and were low maintenance so Kenmore fit the bill. After buying a few she started bringing her "found" sewing machines for me to look over and bring back to life or let them go by the wayside. The Haitian project is a fascinating one where they are teaching the women to make reusable sanitary pads and diapers. Once they get the hang of it, create a market for the product, and go into business, these women become entrepreneurs and gain independence or at least contribute to their household budget. The sewing machines have been shipped over and when they have landed Ellen and others have gone to show them how to cut and sew these handy items.

So how does this all get funded? Ellen makes bags. Lots and lots of bags! Burlap, decorator fabric, webbing for straps, etc., are all bought on a large scale for a real bargain price and the assembly line begins. Ellen has at least three sewing machines at her disposal: Juki industrial,  Janome home machine, and a serger were in the following arrangement where Ellen demonstrated the Juki:

Ellen with her burlap on the Juki

The bags are wonderful and very popular now so she sells them at a coffee shop in Wisconsin and a few other places up here in Minnesota. During the winter months she makes mittens out of re-purposed sweaters, also brisk sellers.  Where does all of this take place? She's got quite a set-up in her lower level family room with shelves of fabric, cut portions, large cutting table (I was secretly jealous of that), along with her sewing machines:

Burlap bag parts

Even her husband has gotten into this endeavor, pounding in the grommets for the handles. And then there's a basic Kenmore at the edge of this part of the family room that a friend uses when she comes over to help! Of course, there also are the materials collected for the Haiti project stored there, too.

Sample of the bags hanging up when done

As generous as she always is, Ellen sent me home with some burlap so I could make some jar lid pincushions.

First try with burlap for a jar pincushion

Wow, what a vision that now has feet due to Ellen and her friends who have committed themselves to helping women learn to help themselves. As a parting comment, she told me "You know, my job just gets in the way of all I want to do." I hear ya, Ellen, I hear ya.