Necessity drives a lot of things

When I had problems with my Janome a few weeks ago it was a seemingly pretty simple fix. It was filled with lint and that impeded the feed dogs. But I'm now faced with an annoying foible of this machine that sometimes the feed dogs will not come back up and sometimes I need to go through the whole rigmarole of opening it up and inspecting it all (that's means wiggle a lot of stuff). But twice now that hasn't done the trick. The dogs do return but its on their own schedule. It is around 10 years old. That's not old.

If money was snow I'd replace the machine in an instance....... BUT I like it.
My hubby bought a can of pressurized air for cleaning computers so that's my next strategy.
But this has been costing me time. I haven't begun something new because of the dog issue. (Mind you it pushed me to finish a few things.)

But the short of it all is I'm hesitant to lower those dogs. Free motion work is all done with no dogs in play. Yes I could cover them with a piece of plastic, (Plan C) but its not come to that.
I DO have another machine a Juki which does beautiful free motion work except it doesn't have a  means to fix the stitching speed. (Bummer). (That's Plan D)

So the Janome for sewing? and zigzag (Satin stitching) and the Juki for free motion. Sounds nice.
But my space IS limited and my sewing table too small for two machines. 55" x 24"

A quick inspection of the local thrift store turned up this beautiful, shamefully inexpensive maple table. 55" x 32" Same foot print but 8' wider. this allows me to place a machine at either end. It actually gives me more light as well as my back is no longer to the room's lighting. I placed an old mirror on the back wall to help bring in more light and now I think I'm away to races again.

I do love my Janome but the waiting times for service are up to 2 weeks in my area and you can never get out for under $100. We'll see if two dedicated machines drive me nuts or save my bacon.

Starting Over

On Feb 4th I showed you the OOP's Quilt. Wasn't thinking, Cabin fever? Who knows but it was bad!

I'm happy to say that  I finished ripping out all the quilting. I had restricted myself to 1 to 2 hours in the late afternoon for the chore. I could sit down with a glass of wine, cuddle IN the quilt as this interminable winter closed in every evening and cut stitches.
I cut everyone!
I wanted a clean removal with no tears or damage. The holes left by the heavy stitching were formidable and there were times that I thought I had really ruined it, but I carried on. On Mar 1, I decided I'd had enough of this silliness and sat down and in a 6 hour marathon. finished.

Lots of holes!

 

So today, I separated the three pieces, top, batting and backing. I picked off all the threads. I reasoned that since the batiks had been immersed in water who knows how many times during their manufacture, they weren't going to shrink so I decided to wash them to help close the holes from the stitches. I sewed the back and front separately into  tubes to minimize fraying and matting. Without adding detergent, they were gently agitated for a very short time, then spun dry. Into the dryer to damp dry, stitches undone and then ironed. I decided while I was at it I may as well preshrink the batting.

So everything sits now waiting for the quilting muse to tell me the RIGHT pattern. Then I will begin again.









in

Calm After The Storm - Sold

It took me a few says to decide how I wanted to finish this. In the end minimal was the best.
I added a couple of foot drag lines and brightened up the white in the ears and tail.

A 1/4" flanged edging of black and grey was all I added.

Calm After The Storm

"Between" Quilting

I would love to say I can churn out pieces of art anytime. But I can't. I have to wait until the next idea crystalizes. To keep busy, I quilt.
In January I started working on 3 quilts, at once: the "oops" quilt ( which by the way I have ALMOST finished "un-quilting") a small red and white quilt, ( I liked it SO much I'm working on a full size version, but I ran out of a fabric and had to order more so its still in the UFO pile) and a really lovely blue, grey, and white quilt. That one I finished today. But it too was not without its moments.
Carefully measured and assembled I discovered at the very end of its quilting I had miscut the backing (DUH) and I was short 2 inches! The quilt had to come off the longarm, have more backing attached and remounted on the longarm. Do you think it would cooperate? The long and the short of it was I ended up finishing the borders on my domestic sewing machine. I certainly have more admiration for those who stubbornly quilt on their domestics ALL the time.

I think a glass of wine MAY relieve the ache in my hands and shoulders. Might need two.

But it's finished. Enjoy!

 

The FINISH - sold

After a few wobbly moments and sleepless hours, I declare this piece done.
There was a moment yesterday, when I thought I had ruined it by adding the snow to the trees. The resulting effect was to wash out the piece. There was no contrast left. In the middle of the night, listening to the dismal "spring"? rain, I came to terms with restarting this piece.
There was one last solution to try.
As the trees were now, too pale and washed out, I went at the 3 largest trees with fabric paint and gave them some heft again. My, how good that felt.
I also wrestled with hiding the tips of the deer's feet in the snow, but after a few attempts could fine no satisfactory way to do that. Had I made the "drifts" of snow with folded fabric, then I could have done it with the feet. Doing it now made it look out of place.
I won't bind it for a bit. I KNOW I'll fiddle with something, but my intentions are to give it a 1/8 edging in the dark grey of the trees and then finish it with a standard 1/4 inch black binding.