MEET MR. PFAFF 2058

Some of you wanted pictures...well.............here he is. Isn't he handsome?

You should hear him purr when I touch him.

He marches to the beat of my drums.

He tries to please me at every turn.

My eyes sparkle when he lights up, my desires are his desires.

We are in tune with each other as the day progresses.

Maybe I will be spending too much time with him?

What if my husband finds out? Is it wrong to be in love with him and my husband too? You think my husband will care? See what you think.....


All fun aside

He is awesome tho.....

Here is the wedding quilt finally finished. I actually did my binding like ..... can you believe it, I looked all in my blog for that blog addy and can't find it. There is a tutorial out there that shows how to bind a quilt by sewing it on, then flipping it over and sewing in the ditch to sew the back of the binding on...can't find it.....sorry...but that is how I put this binding on. I really liked the way it turned out. I need to fine tune my sewing and all will be well.

Now....I decided not to put pictures on this...but still can...it is just the tee shirt transfers you iron on....but I have not done such a hot job on this quilt, would really hate to mess it up further....we will see, maybe I will have confidence tomorrow...if so, I will post it.

KING SIZE QUILT - USED THE PATTERN FROM OLD RED BARN QUILT ALONG

These fabrics are soooooooooooooo awesome. The color in this picture just does not do them justice. This quilt is for a friend, she asked me to make her a king size quilt....she just said deep browns, greens, and blues.....so that is what I did. I told my husband if she doesn't like this quilt, I will just put it on the spare bed for company. We are getting compnay...isn't that wonderful???? My husband's cousin and his wife.

I am going to put a border on this as well...I like for my quilts to drape the bed nicely... No finishing this until I know whether my husband can make a run to Hawaii for more quilt batting. I did tell you that my friend got some here but it was high loft, I like low loft and she paid, I believe she said 4.96 a yard...she got 11 yards...sheweeeeeee ..........................I can wait....I said I was good at waiting....

"GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE THAT WAIT!"

AND WAIT!!!!


AND WAIT!!!

AND WAIT!!

I have gotten good at waiting since being here on this island. I purchased these Annies from My Little Annies (check out my side bar for her blog).....I just love these Annies but it has taken over 2 months for me to get them. Check out her blog, she is awesome and her dolls are fabulous. Now you ask, what is a woman with five sons doing with these dolls.........I just couldn't pass them up...they are adorable and will make great baby gifts.

I even thought they were lost....so.................today was an extremely good mail day!! Remember, we only get mail twice a week.




I will have to confess, I did not have to wait long for this tote from "Green Fairy Quilts".(check out the side bar for her blog)... I won this at her last giveaway and if you have ever purchased anything from her, they are very good about getting things out in a speedy fashion. Don't you just love it? You can not see the details, the professional quilting, sewing, and just absoutely wonderful job she has done. Go check out her blog and her website!!



I have been waiting for these books forever.....so glad they came in as well.

As I am typing this my husband is listening to his 70's music he ordered....so he had a good mail day too..


Then...........................the most wonderful of wonders came in the mail.

I must say, I just ordered this last week......he mailed it on Saturday and I was thinking that it would take forever. It only took a week...none tooo soon either....

So......................... feast your eyes .....


What a great mail day...truly.

Yep, my new Pfaff is in. My Bernina just isn't cutting it....last night while sewing it would only run one speed....and well....I like putting the hammer down and it just wouldn't knock out the speed I wanted.


Have I sewn on it yes you ask? YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSs and I love it....sorry Mrs. Bernina (yes, my machine is married) but on this Pfaff I never had to rethread my machine...my Bernina, every time I went to start sewing I would lose my thread and have to rethread....do you know how many times a person can rethread a machine without getting frustrated? Sorry for you Bernina lovers but I really have not enjoyed my Bernina...it would make this awful noise....the stitches would go bad.....and this was from day one. So as I am sewing with my new Pfaff...we will call him Mr. Pfaff....never once did my thread come undone....and I am keeping my fingers crossed that the stitches remain good.

...oh yes...

What a good mail day indeed!

SAMOAN GOODNESS CONTINUES.....

so...my one friend loved my Samoan quilt, so much so that instead of giving it away she kept it for herself. She wants me to make another one to send. While she was looking at the quilt, another friend saw it, emailed me and wanted me to make her one...so what you see below is for the one friend that email me. The colors are more vibrant in person.


Then................. I won!!!!!! I won the giveaway over at Quilt Taffy. They have a wonderful blog and etsy store, well worth the trip over there to check it out.


Be sure to stay tuned...hopefully, in the near future I will have a bag to show you....thanks again to Quilt Taffy!!!

ZIPPERS MADE EASY

This is for those of you who are afraid of zippers. I know there are tutorials out there that could do 100% better than myself in explaining this but....you are stuck with me for now. When I showed a few of the gals that sew with me on Thursdays this, they go aahhhhhhhh that isn't bad at all...

SO............. you have your zipper face up....a zipper foot.


Take your material and sew it with the front side down (pattern side down).



Then you just butt your zipper foot up against the zipper itslef.


Back stitch and start sewing, right up against the zipper....yes I already said that...


Then you just change your sewing foot,then flip the material over and top stitch. Any questions?



Easy...truly, just try it, you will be so amazed....If I can do this, trust me, anyone can ........

What is in your tote?

This is my Sunday tote, I made this one over a year ago, even thought the button closure was my idea and then I see it all over the blogs now...oh well...we must all think alike (that can be a good thing). Several ladies at church have totes similar since they are part of my Thursday sewing group. Not a very good picture but this post is not about this tote...



This is the inside material of my tote...don't you just love it?


Now to what this post is all about......this.......what is it, you it say? Something to match my tote for Sunday....something to carry my scriptures in to protect them.


This is the inside...not finished yet, neither is the outside....have to work out a few details and sew the lining down. I will never do this again...one of those projects you rip out til you are SICK AND TIRED OF RIPPING OUT!!!!


This is my old scripture case(actually, this is a lunch box and I just used it for a scripture case).....


Next I am going to make a cosmetic bag to match but I won't show that, you all are sick of my cosmetic bags....and probably my totes...but this blog is about what I am up to...sometimes no good....

Now, won't I just be the cat's meow at church? Purrrr purrr

SOME MORE SAMOAN GOODNESS

One of my friends asked if I would make a baby quilt out of Samoan fabric. She went and picked the fabrics. The yellow brown fabric (turtles) is my fabric, just thought it needed an extra punch!!!! This is the yellow brick road pattern but I added the turtles. It took me about 3 hours to design these turtles (I am not an artist)...but I drew them on tissue paper because that was all I had that was big enough for what I wanted. Then I transferred them to a large piece of construction paper (only had black) and then traced them on the fusible (had to use 4 sheets of fusible) and well...there you have it. I am really nervous, I don't know if she will like it or not????????



Then for an extra bonus....I made a matching tote. This tote has a small pocket in the big pocket for a cell phone. A pocket on the back and pockets all the way across one side in the inside.... I also quilted the bag so it would be sturdier...

WHAT AN AMAZING GAL!!!

Below you will see the finished quilt that my friend did in the Quiltalong with the old red barn. She is totally amazing because she had never stippled a day in her life. I tried to convince her to tie the quilt but she wouldn't have it. She did an amazing job for her first project and such a big one too. I felt bad for her because my Janome kept messing up on her and even her machine.... She is a great one for perserverance. The batting she found here on the island, it is was a high loft batting and cost her an arm...... didn't she do an awesome job....



Just as a reminder, this is the last few days of Sew Fun quilts by Sewmeow

PILLOWCASES.......QUILTS ........ MAIL

I bet you thought I was going to show you some more pillowcases......NOT!!! but I did do five Saturday, already packed up and ready to mail on Thursday.....................

So Saturday, I got mail from GREEN FAIRY QUILTS.



I was so excited that I tore into some of my fat quarter packs and made this:



and this:



I have one fat quarter bundle left, any suggestions?

Monday I started a project for a friend, should be finished today....if I am done...will show you tomorrow...until then.....keep those machines running.

ALSO, TIME IS RUNNING OUT ON THIS AWESOME GIVEAWAY AT SEW FUN QUILTS, she is trying to get 100 followers by her birthday and she is giving away amazing prizes....go check it out...and follow her blog, you truly will not regret it.

BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN!!!

Got my stars made.... finally, if I told you how long I have been working on them you would be ashamed but as I said, lots of frustrations..... My husband is loving this quilt, he asked me who it was for. It is for me!!! Him!!! The ropes had horse shoes on them but I didn't like the how busy it made it, infact, that was the one part I did not like about the pattern, so I just left them off, may put them somewhere else.



This is the young gal I am teaching to sew....one happy girl.

BLUE JEAN CIRCLES OR CATHEDRAL WINDOWS???? YOU DECIDE

I found this tutorial making the quilt below. If you are interested, go to BLUE JEAN QUILT GALLERY. I had (notice the past tense) all these old jeans, I spent the afternoon cutting circles for a project for the future. Atleast the jeans are not taking up ugly space now....just a stack of circles neatly in the corner.

PICTURES OF QUILTS I MADE EARLY ON IN MY QUILTING LIFE.

This one was done about 5 years ago (so not too early on) but it won a blue ribbon in the Lampasas County Fair. I started it in Missouri and two years later finished it while waiting to get in our new home in Texas. It is a Thimbleberry pattern.


This one is appliqued hearts, lots of fun, and I did this one in Missouri while waiting on the boys with various appointments, it is tied, not quilted. They didn't mind snuggling up with this in the cold Missouri winters....


This is one of the very first quilts I ever made, hand qppliqued and hand quilted. It took me about two years. I had always wanted a Sun Bonnet Sue quilt and so I made me one. Trust me, by the wear and tear on this one, the boys didn't care if it had Sue on it, when you are cold, you are cold. It does have alot of wear on it but trust me, it is in great condition for being washed more than once a week, tugged and pulled on, fought over and love by me.


These quilts were suppose to have gone in storage but they snuck in our wares for Samoa, so they are in a room with a dehumidifier to keep them snug until we hit the states for those cold winters.

Some of you may have seen these on a different blog of mine but I closed that blog down and so...you see them once again...sorry for the repetition.....I spent most of my day playing on the computer and not sewing.

CHICKEN QUILT

My husband has a birthday coming this Monday, and so I finally finished this quilt for him. Tried all different ways to quilt this but finally decided that little is better.....(after spending about 1 1/2 hours pulling out threads, from trying this or that)....not fun....but it is done. Oh...there is a problem with my machine...but I am going to drive it til it dies....and then off to a new machine for me....any suggestions?

SAMOAN GOODNESS SAGA CONTINUES

So I called the dealer and he gave me a few suggestions about my tension and why the machine was going slow (probably hit a button by mistake while moving the quilt around, easy enough) but....he does not know why it just stopped working twice. So that remains to be seen but he said to send it in if it continues to stop. For right now, it is working...yepeeee but....I will say that I do have my eyes on a few machines if this one konks out. He also told me, which most of you know............that the tension for the top thread is the bobbin and the tension for the bottom thread is the top tension. Hummmmm I have been trying to fix the top tension for the top thread and my friend has been trying to fix my Janome's bottom thread by working with the bobbin. Lo and behold, the tension is wonderful. Problem solved!!!! For now.

THE WAY I BIND MOST OF MY QUILTS!!!

Now....as for the way I do my bindings....I came up with this when I first started doing quilts, saw no tutorials, got no advice, just came up with this.....so we will call this THE EASY WAY TO BIND A QUILT. I make my bindings just like most of you....but...I do not cut on the bias, I cut from salvage to salvage. So that being said....(oh...use alot of starch too) So....I have my binding...I start to sew but leave a few inches of binding hanging to attach to the end of the binding (just like you do)...but....as you see below, I sew both sides on at the same time...just put the quilt inbetween the folds and sew.


I sew all the way to the end, backstitch and cut thread.....


Then I fold over the corners as you see below and I backstitch and sew all the way to the end again....
This is a picture of the front of the corner after sewn


This is a picture of the back of the corner after sewn.


Then I just continue to sew until I get to the end.....I sew the bindings right sides together (no angle seam...just sew straight across, haven't had trouble with this and it works for me)flip back over and it just folds ever so nicely down and sew...and there you have it, one completed binding.

The finished quilt (also, I have a makeshift way of trying to display the quilts, sometimes it does not show it in the right way or even square but it is. The light is shinning through also, not a good picture.


Here is the back of the quilt. I have seen on several blogs...(sorry that I can't name blogs), to where they use pieces of the fabric or squares from the fabric to put on the back to extend it....so I decided to do this.


I just want to thank all the comments yesterday and the show of concern over my machine....only a quilter or someone who sews alot would understand the value a machine is and the loss of one. So thank you so much.