Telling Time

Hoping I'm about caught up with Christmas preparations, I can finally write up what I've been doing with my sewing machines. The last warm day here in Minnesota was about ten days ago so with one mad dash to donation centers and some thoughtful rearranging of the garage, both cars were back inside before we got the next snowfall. It's been more than chaotic here with the new windows finally installed, bathroom light and fan done, and new refrigerator ordered to replace the broken one. That still leaves another ceiling fixture and fan in the second bedroom, HVAC people for duct cleaning and furnace check that had to be rescheduled. In the midst of all of this I have been working on sewing projects, too!

Spoonflower, the company that lets you design your own fabric or even purchase someone else's design, had a great fat quarter sale and that's just the size (18" by 22") I need to make up recipe card dish towels like I did at this time last year. This year I had a brainstorm to make up calendar towels using some photos of a family wedding. Using PicMonkey online photo editing, I came up with this:

Printed fat quarter comes unfinished

Printed on their heavier weight canvas linen so it's a good feel and weight, it's also a larger size than the standard fat quarter since this linen is wider than standard cotton. This happy family just moved into a new home so I'll get it hemmed for a housewarming present and a memory of our trip together. Here's what they look like finished:

Wedding memories

Since it was a beach wedding, I used a cloud background via PicMonkey and added the calendar from a free calendar and image site. I did have to be careful when hemming because one side was nearly white and the other blue so I changed thread color as needed. It looks skewed in the photo but it really is straight! One little snafu was not checking the calendar for typos: there was a red line under each abbreviation for Tuesday and Thursday so a small red line appears under each and every month for Tu and Th. I would have edited them out if I would only have caught it! Live and learn on that one. All in all, they turned out nice and will be gifts for the new year.

While I was bringing sewing machines into the house, I spied this a very dirty Singer 185 and cleaned it up to reveal how nice it really was:

Singer 185 out of Canada

It took some coaxing to get it sounding good again but there was nothing a good cleaning and oil couldn't fix. I put it in one of the wood bases I had someone make up for me last spring so it's ready to go. There's no top for these bases so I should make up a cloth cover and that brings me back to Spoonflower. I bought someone else's design as a fat quarter in hopes of making up a cute cover but noticed the design is running the wrong way so will have to combine with another fabric to make a cover. Here's what I have for sewing themed fabric:

Sewing themed fabrics: Spoonflower design on right is so cute!

The one on the far fight with the vintage sewing machine photos will be my "centerpiece" but think I should pair it with something less busy than the fabrics I have on the left. Maybe the green Singer 185 should have the spools of thread on the brown background for a cover but I'll have to see how much is left. I would love to make up my own quilted fabric and as I type my mind is forming a plan for piecing squares and quilting for a fantastic new cover. Oh, I can hardly wait to get started!

Much to my relief, the Christmas tree is up, cards have been sent, the refrigerator is being delivered today, and the electrician is scheduled to come tomorrow. All of this gives us the freedom to head up north for three days to Gunflint Lodge for a smoked meat weekend. That's right, we will be watching them smoke meat and other food to enjoy while we hike outdoors in their single digit weather. We really like this place and couldn't resist a package deal plus a chance to get away and relax before the rush of company and cooking. I'll let you know how it goes but there is no internet access up there and we will be UNPLUGGED for three days. This will be good for me, too, but I'll report back about the food and the sights but not expecting any sewing machine sightings but you never know...

When You Are Popular

It seems I have some popular sewing machines. This kind of thing seems to defy logic. Why are the Featherweight sewing machines, those Singer 221's, so sought after? They have their good points (lightweight, excellent stitch) but other sewing machines have these qualities, too. They are just popular! This takes me back to high school when certain classmates were seen as being the ones you wanted to be around: they were popular. Were they nicer than others, smarter, richer, physically more appealing? Well, yes, usually it was some of those assets. The same can be said for sewing machines: easier to use, pricey, and can do a few things very well. But it also boils down to a hidden factor that is unpredictable: everyone else wants them, too. So I have some popular sewing machines that I could sell over and over again.

One of my popular sewing machines is the Brother Select-O-Matic. I'm still getting calls about it! There are searches that bring up closed ads from Craigslist, Ad Hunt'r is one, so it is possible to get calls from interested parties months after your ad has closed. That means I can get emails from around the country asking if I would ship a sewing machine. No. But there are still interested parties in that gem of a sewing machine:

Brother Select-o-Matic as two tone

and in teal

Next up in popularity are vintage Berninas and there aren't any bad models, it seems. Right now I have three listed locally: 700, 807, and 1001. They are all very different from each other and manufactured decades apart but are beautiful stitchers, not as heavy as some, with a reputation for excellence:

Bernina 700: straight and zigzag stitches

Bernina 807 Minimatic: six stitches 

Bernina 1001: so many, many stitches!

 For my money, I would choose the 1001 because of the stretch and decorative stitches but I'm selling, not hording. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Update on the recipe card tea towels: my daughters got theirs for Christmas and loved them. It took a moment for them to realize it wasn't just a random recipe on a towel (oh, Mom is so weird) but their grandma's recipe card on their very own towel "that I'm never going to wash!"

Kelly and Alison with their towels

 I also just received two more of the printed recipes of my aunt Marcella's that I'm going to hem and send one to my youngest sister, Mindy, and then have one for myself. Mindy, if you are reading this, expect yours in the mail next week. Now I should write a letter to my Aunt Marcella and tell her about her recipe card popularity; I hope she will get a big kick out of it. You see, it's all about popularity.

A Recipe for Success

Sometimes a substitute turns out better than your first choice: this is a story where things turned out better than expected.

In Minnesota, we have a privately funded Textile Center that offers a wide array of classes, a local shop, and hosts the ever popular garage sale each spring. One of the classes offered in September was all about Etsy: how to make your Etsy shop really work for you. I got all signed up but as the day approached I could see that I wasn't going to make it as I got sick. Although I cancelled in advance, hoping they could fill my spot with someone from the waiting list, I heard nothing. Thinking this was going to be just a wasted fee, I bemoaned this to my friend, Ann, who suggested I get back in touch with them. Sure enough (Ann, you are so smart) they would let me substitute another class in the same semester. I got signed up with a class in learning to to take your photos and print them on fabric. I got my laptop all set up with the "PicMonkey" program as suggested. Parking is usually at a premium in their location so I was glad to have been there before and knowing where I could and couldn't park. There were about a dozen women ready to learn with either their own laptop of they could have reserved one from the Center.

We learned all about sizes of photos, pixels, how much we could enlarge something and how to get around things that looked impossible to print. Using the images we were given to work with on a flash drive, we could manipulate them to make a new photograph, sometimes a collage, and even give them special effects in PicMonkey. There were many examples of what we could do with photographs on fabric and then we were introduced to Spoonflower. This is a company that can print your image on various fabrics of your choosing, from cotton to knits, to upholstery. The project that really excited me was to make a tea towel with an image of a recipe card. Now that was something unique to our family yet practical to boot. I was game to try this!

I went home to choose and scan my recipe cards, trying to get those that were more colorful. There weren't any. But there were cards that had "From the kitchen of..." and printed with my Aunt Marcella's name. I was also looking for those with the originators handwriting, especially if they are no longer with us: that did make them precious. My recipe cards were scanned but I wanted them on a cuter background so I also scanned a section of dark blue gingham checks. Using that as the background and centering each card image on it, I then had four images to print on a yard of fabric, a linen canvas that was recommended. I couldn't figure out how to do that so I sent a question into Spoonflower. Although it took almost six emails to get all of the details straight (I'm a slow learner!), I finally had them as one big image to print. I hit "Order" and tried not to wince. What if the writing was too faint? Would they look straight enough? Did I just throw my money away?

The next day I went back in to look at what I ordered and was shocked to see that I missed one of the cards and replicated two. What? That's what happens when you do things in dim light late at night! Oh well, they were ordered and I would take what I would get. It only took about two weeks for my original creation to be printed and get delivered. I opened the package to find:

4 recipes on one yard of 54" wide fabric

They were wonderful, better than anything I could have hoped for! Alright, there were two of Aunt Marcella's but they were good ones. The print was bold and clear, transferring the few stains that were on the original recipe cards. Cute! I brought my yard of fabric to work and showed all of my co-workers what I had learned and how easy it was. There are many of them, maybe most, that have better technology skills than I do so I encouraged them to try this out, too. Now I have to cut them apart and hem to send off for Christmas.

Not perfectly straight with the background causes problems

Pressed and hemmed

As it turned out, I had difficulty getting a good stitch on my Viking +1 so I tried the Bernina 530 so get stitches that were passable. Next I might try different thread and needles because this should not be difficult. Maybe the Singer 201? No, I ended up using a White rotary that was recently rewired to get the best stitches. It just goes to show you that their is never just one sewing machine that is the best at everything.

My sister Sue was the first to get hers and was she ever excited. The first comment was "It's Marcella's handwriting!" This prompted a long phone call where we talked about the meaning behind all of this and how we shared recipes over the years and Aunt Marcella was such a good cook. Here's Sue with her tea towel:

and a day later Jane got hers:

It's such a little thing but a great outcome, so great that on Spoonflower they had a 48 hour offer of buy one fat quarter and get another one free so I ordered two more so my sister Mindy and I can each have one, too. If you are reading this, Mindy, just hold on and you will get yours in January! What about the other two recipe cards from my first yard of fabric? Those are going to each of my daughters so "sshh" to help keep it a secret until then. Next up for this same project will be my mother-in-law's recipes that we can scan for shower presents: there's a wedding in May and Mary is excited about this new idea, too.

Look what I've started...