Friday, June 28, 2013

My baby's back


My beautiful pink Morse sewing machine is back from her vacation with the restoration guy.  She had every little mechanism fixed and fine-tuned.  The mechanic even removed the "Morse" lettering and touched up the black paint between the letters.  It's like she's been to the spa and the cosmetic surgeon.  There were a lot of signs of wear and tear but now she sews beautifully and fast with a soft hum.

Hats off to S.O.S. Machines for the wonderful restoration work.  Visit the website for some beautiful vintage machine eye candy.

She has a faint smell of lubricant still, so I'm going to run some old fabric through just to make sure there isn't any excess. Then I'm going to assign her a project.  I think she needs some vintage fabric to work on.  I was able to get  a case too, so she has a stable base now.

What should she work on first?

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Sweetheart Houses Progress


Here are the first two houses in my next applique quilt, "Sweetheart Houses."  The pattern is from Shabby Fabrics.  I love pink so I couldn't resist this girly quilt.  Hopefully I'll get it done in time for next Valentine's Day.

We've had a whole range of weather in the last week, including rain.  At last it's getting hot, and I'm not going to complain because it seems we had too much cold weather this spring.  I'm ready for shorts and iced tea.  The garage where my sewing machine lives is nice and cool, so I just have to minimize the amount of time I use the iron.  Actually rather challenging for a quilter.

The kids are driving me a little crazy lolling around the house and checking the refrigerator all day.  It would be great if someone could devise a lock with a timer so they could only open it every three hours or something.  It's really pretty alarming the amount of food they can consume when it's so easy to get to. 

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Shop Hop Quilt Top

Last weekend Wasabi Girl and I went on a quilt shop hop.  I've never done one before.  It took us two busy days to drive to all 12 shops.  It was even more fun than I thought it would be.

Each shop gave us red or blue squares and white squares and instructions for completing a pinwheel table runner.  I don't really use table runners so I made this little pinwheel quilt instead.  So festive and it will always be a fun memory of our adventure.

There are a lot of prizes available for those who went to all 12 shops.  There is even a sewing machine offered for people under 18, so we're hoping Wasabi Girl has a good chance to win that.  I was absolutely drooling over some of the huge gift baskets offered by some of the shops.  Hundreds of people participated though, so the odds are long.

We had to turn in our completed "passports" so I took a picture.  It took a lot of hours and a lot of driving to get all of these!  One shop even moved towns the day before the shop hop started.  I think we should get extra credit just for finding that one.

One of the shops was near Monterey so we had to stop off at our favorite candy store to get some salt water taffy.  This place has a ridiculous number of flavors.

We discovered a new favorite coffee drink along the way.  Icy coconut mint Freddo.  Sounded sketchy but turned out to be fabulous.  I'm not sure I needed the calories from the whipped cream but it was a special treat for our trip.

Linking up today to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced

Monday, June 17, 2013

Makes My Monday: Ballet Recital


Another June, another ballet recital.  Drama Girl and Jungle Boy were fabulous.  After the show, I went to the lobby to take pictures like all the other families.  There was Drama Girl, footsore from two hours in pointe shoes. She slipped on the shoes she found more comfortable - her combat boots.  So much for the illusion of grace and delicacy.  Jungle Boy had already changed out of his costume completely. 

Drama Girl will be a senior next year.  At the end of the show the seniors always get a special dance.  It gets a bit emotional as the girls realize this is their last performance with this dance school.  This year some of them were in tears as the dance began.  The audience choked up with them.  All I could think was about how this will play out next year.  I will be a wreck watching her up there.  I have a year to prepare myself I guess.

Now that this performance is over, I feel like summer can finally get started.  Hooray!  No more driving kids all over the place for a few weeks.  Time to sew.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Design Wall Monday: 4 more Farmer's Wife blocks

This weekend I pulled out my Farmer's Wife blocks again to work on.  I'm getting a bit frustrated with the Farmer's Wife book, so I've re-engineered many of the blocks and two of these are from a different book.  So the "Buzzard's Roost" block in the lower right has extra seam lines for example.  Usually I end up with fewer seams than the FW book.  It was just easier to make a series of flying geese for this one than aligning all the different triangles.

I still haven't used all of my hot pink fabrics.  There are quite a few jammed into this bin.  I'm enjoying these bright happy blocks.  22 down, 28 to go.

Linking up today to Patchwork Times.

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