2013 Show and Tell

Happy New Year!  Another year finished, and it is time for the annual "what did you make this year?" show and tell.

This year, I didn't do a lot of quilting.  I was busy working on remodeling a "handyman special" property, which was quite a challenge since it required me to learn how to be a handyman.

I did manage to make a few small quilts though.

The snowbird quilt was the most recent finish.

The red and white one was made at the same time as the snowbird.

In September, I finished some simple curtains for my bedroom and the guest room.  The photo shows the guest room curtains.  I've read about the trick of having big curtains to make the windows look bigger, but my walls are really small, and big windows like that would dwarf the room and make it look smaller.   I got new curtain rods after this photo was taken.  The willow is a stencil on the walls that were made by the person who lived here before me.

Tulip Pillow made at Viking Sewing Event

I made this pillow cover at a class at Joann's in the summer.

I finished Blushing Bride in January. I am still debating whether to add some more embroidery to it.

There are a couple of quilts that I have been working on recently. The end of the year trunk show really serves as a motivator.  I didn't finish these in 2013, but they are well on the way.

This is another red and white quilt so I can have a collection. It doesn't have a name yet. When this is finished, I will have two red and white quilts!   It started out as a copy of a quilt I found on Pinterest, but I lost the pin amongst my millions I have on the board, and decided to wing it on my own. So many choices! Should I add sashing? Border? Red or white? They all changed the look of the quilt, and were all perfectly acceptable choices. In the end, I decided to not to add a sashing or a border and leave it as is.

I think that the main difference between my quilt and the one I found was that the original quilt is bigger, and my white triangles are proportionately bigger. They are small, and I was afraid they would all get lost in the seam allowance.  This makes it look completely different from the original, but it looks okay and I decided to keep going with it.  I could always make another one that looks closer to the original. I am going to add at least one more row of echo quilting before binding it.  I decided that I'd rather not skip the extra row of quilting just to have another finish in 2013.

This is the Daisy quilt I am making from a kit. It is all put together and sandwiched.  It needs quilting.  I was going to free motion quilt the red and white one so I could test out that feature on my new machine, but I wound up doing straight line quilting on it to keep it simple.

I hope you have enjoyed my 2013 Show and Tell.  I hope you have a wonderful New Year, full of happy memories, good health, peace and relaxation, a large circle of loved ones, lots of money and even more time to do the things you want to do!

Viking Sewing Event

Tulip Pillow made at Viking Sewing Event

Earlier this year, my trusty 24-year-old Kenmore gave out on me.  It seemed like it was a goner, and I started thinking about getting a new machine.  I tinkered some more with the Kenmore and think I have fixed it, but I haven't had time to work with it during the busy season at work.  But the yearning for a new machine didn't leave me, and I broke down and bought a new machine, the Husqvarna Viking 650 with lots of stitches.  I have started writing a review for it, and want to try out some more features before I publish it.

I am still working out a schedule for my free new machine classes, but in the meantime, I received an email on Tuesday about a Sewing Event.  Pay a small fee for supplies and lunch, and come in for six hours.  On Thursday.  Talk about short notice!  I am still working, but I have flexible hours, so I decided to take the day off.  Of course, my boss decided I had a deadline on Thursday, so I worked late on Wednesday and early Thursday morning in order to meet it. Phew! That was tiring.

On Thursday, I went to Joann's (the Viking store is inside Joanns, but it is a separate entity).  I thought I would be the only person there, or one of a few, but there were more than 10 people!  I missed the introductions so I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen, but it turned out that we were all making a pillow.

Watching Embroidery Machine Doing All the Work

We first sewed the triangles onto the center square.  They set us up on the embroidery machine, and we could watch the design show up on our piece.  Then we chose our own quilting stitches and locations, and put a backing to make a pillow.

It was, as expected, a way to drum up sales - check out our wonderful embroidery machine, on sale now!, the embroidery software that lets you design your own embroidery designs, how about a new quarter inch foot with a flange to keep your fabric from wandering off (which I really want now), etc.

It is a beautiful pillow, and it is amazing all the wonderful features that are available today.

Embroidery and Quilting Stitches on Tulip Pillow

I enjoyed the class, but it didn't have the satisfaction of making something.  Part of it is the fact that I made the same thing as everyone else.  I always change up patterns to avoid having something that looks exactly like someone else's.  Personally, the joy for me in quilting is the designing and making part, and not the finished product, so having a machine that does everything for me was somewhat disappointing.    It was a good lesson for me to learn, though, because I had been eyeing the embroidery machines, especially the ones that let you design your own patterns, and now I know that I made the right choice with the machine I did buy.