Not Quite a Quilt....

I haven't worked on any of my  quilting projects lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't done anything on my sewing machine.

On my January retreat one of the ladies who attends collects the fabric scraps to use to make dog beds and gives them to the local animal shelter; however, this year she has stopped this project and didn't want scraps at our January retreat. Therefore, I had a few bags of fabric scraps sitting in the basement with nowhere to go except the trash, but I couldn't quite bring myself to throw them out. Enter the dog we're watching for a few weeks. My son (bless his little heart) thought the dog needed a bed so he threw down a sleeping bag for him and I said, oh no, I have a much better idea. So James and I went down in the basement, I found a crib sheet that we don't need anymore, cut the elastic out, sewed it up, added the scraps, I sewed the seam closed, embroidered Bolt's name on it with my new sewing machine, and we made the dog a bed. We are, however, despite my husband's wishes, not keeping the dog.

Almost Finish #1 for 2014 and Piecing Batting

My new to me Bernina is up and running and the knee lift has been acquired from the original ebay seller. I spent this weekend finishing the piecing for the Bernstein Bears quilt and I got it basted Sunday afternoon. I need to decide how to quilt it, and whether or not to try to do it on the new Bernina, or the "new" Singer 15-91.

I do, however, now covet an extension table for the Bernina; the one that came with the machine is, shall we say, lacking. I don't miss much about my Elna Supermatic, but I do miss the large table that the case provided. I am considering ordering an after market extension table for my birthday.

Also, for the quilt I needed to piece some of the batting, and wow, did the Bernina do a beautiful job with it. I ended up using stitch 8, which is the fifth stitch in on the bottom row here. I was very pleased, it made me want to take all of the batting I have in a box and piece it together.

I'm hoping to get that quilt quilted and put binding on this week, and perhaps finish the quilting and binding of the Nautical quilt, another one that's begging to be complete and out of the quilting room.



New Machine = New Project

Well, my new to me Bernina Activa 240 is up and running in the sewing area. I'm enjoying her immensely. However, she's missing a knee lift, I'm hoping to get it from the ebay seller, otherwise I'll need to head to my local Bernina who does have them in stock. It's interesting to me how different sewing machines are, they all sew just a little bit differently. One of the things I noticed about the Bernina is that the foot pedal lets you do just one stitch at a time and especially for more finicky projects I'm sure that will come in handy.

In other news, I decided that a new sewing machine deserved a new project (I needed to start another project like I needed another hole in the head...) and I started working on a Bernstein Bears quilt from a charm pack. The only trick to this is that the sashing needs to be 2.75 inches instead of 2.5, of course I discovered this after cutting up a yard of white into 2.5 inch strips; however, I'm sure I'll use them in future projects. For this quilt the charms are all pieced together and I just need to add the sashing, I hope to have the top finished this weekend and then return to some of the projects I started at the retreat.