Sewing Machines

Can hardly believe that 2010 is almost over! It has been a busy time in the last few weeks with Christmas preparations and then 10 days in a row of visiting and over night visitors.  It was fun, but exhausting and I'm glad to have a few days to myself now... (not counting hubby of course).

Have done a bit of quilting in between the mad Christmas rush just to keep my sanity! LOL!
I started some simple Christmas place mats, but only 6 of them are done.  I messed up cutting the back fabric so I Only had enough for 6. I looked in my stash and found a similar red fabric with reindeer on it and cut out 2 pieces for the back of #7 and #8.

I'm still in the process of finishing up those last two. I have 2 of the first ones on my kitchen table right now even though Christmas is over. I watch the deer from that same kitchen table through the big bow window which looks out into the back yard, so it seems appropriate to have place mats with deer on them. LOL!

Before Christmas I also sewed some reusable hot coffee sleeves as stocking stuffers for some of my family.  They were quite easy to make.
I just used a cardboard template to trace 2 pieces of fabric and the inner batting, then "enveloped" them together with a loop of elastic at one end. Last I sewed on a button.

 Voila!

I haven't tried them out yet to see how well they work. Guess I should take a trip to Tim Horton's soon! LOL!

I decided to add a 'scrappy' 3 inch border on my 'Scrappy Star" baby quilt. It was 34 inches square, but is now 40"by 40". Today I washed the kitchen floor and then taped the back fabric to the floor. I had to add an extra piece to the inner batting, since the chunk I had wasn't quite wide enough. (I just basted it together with long stitches.) After smoothing the inner batting down and then placing the scrappy quilt top on the top of the other 2 layers, I carefully pinned the 3 layers together.  It's now ready to be machine quilted.

I almost bought myself a new sewing machine yesterday. The local quilt store had a big sale on Huqvarnas and I was interested in the 835. I went on lone to check for reviews later that night and found a LOT of negative reviews for Husqvarnas. It sounds like there are a lot of tension problems with them and problems with the thread spinning off the bobbin  and coming undone.... Guess I won't be getting a Husqvarna 835 after all even if the price is great.

I wish I knew more about sewing machines and which one are really good and problem free. I have a Pfaff 1546 which I've had for 5 years. It is a pretty basic machine although it has a lot of fancy embroidery stitches,Which I seldom use since I'm not really into embroidery right now. I would love a machine with a bigger 'key' (the open area) in order to make machine quilting and free motion quilting easier.

 I read some good things on line about Janomy sewing machines. Maybe I should look further into those machines. Anyone out there in sewing/ quilting land who has any advice about that??? Please forward it on to me. Much appreciated.

Next project...

The black/ white and brown 'Paradigm Shift' quilt is now completed. One finishing touch: My personalized label is made and pinned on the bottom corner of the back, but it just needs to be hand stitched, then EVERYTHING is done. I'm really pleased with how well it turned out for being such a simple design.

Also finished a set of 6 'scrappy' place mats which are a Christmas gift for my mother. They have been wrapped and boxed up and ready to go in the mail tomorrow.

Next project:

I sewed a reusable 'hot coffee' sleeve. I bought one at my favorite coffee shop in town, traced a template on cardboard and made another one. It took longer than I thought it would to assemble it, but I think I'm going to try a different assembly approach with the next one.

 Pics soon....