The Transformation of a Great Lady

I was at the Michigan House this past weekend where one of my projects was to clean and oil the 1933 Singer 15-91 ( in the No. 47 cabinet with knee controller) that lives there.

A few before pictures:

Waiting for a good cleaning - dull, obscured decals

Grungy motor and side plate

There's a scrollwork face plate under there somewhere!

Rusty wheel knob

Inside full of lint & dust. 

A few during the cleaning:

Just sprayed with Tuff Stuff

Tuff Stuff doing its thing

The grunge lifting from the machine

Tuff Stuff dripping off machine, turning brown as the grunge lifts off surface

ICK!!!  These rags went straight into the garbage!

I didn't take any pictures of the oiling and inside cleaning process.  Suffice to say, my tweezers and Q-Tips got quite a work out.  

And, at long last, the after pictures. 

Presenting ... LIL!!!

Look at her decals now!

Now that's a faceplate!

Shiny and oiled

The side plate is so shiny its reflecting the flash

Un-Rusty wheel knob

LOVE the detail.

It really didn't take all that long & it was so worth it to see this beautiful Great Lady glowing.  

Yes, she runs and even though I gave her parts a good oiling, I need to figure out how to get her into the service man for a good internal going over.  I also need to track down some more Singer oil and motor lube!

Hanging by a Thread

As I predicted, I ran out of the Sulky 30 wt. cotton Blendables thread in the soft blacks color I am using to machine quilt DH's 'Grey is Not a Color' quilt.  

Some quick calculations revealed that I have over 450 yards of thread going into just the quilting of this project.  Seeing as this spool is only 500 yards and previously partially used, it's no wonder I ran out. 

If I had been thinking ahead when I first started in on the piecing of this UFO, I could have grabbed a spool back when I did the Shop Hop in mid-March.  Since I had a day of errands planned, I just seriously altered my route (it's 30 miles one way) to get to the quilt shop that carries this thread. Fortunately, they had 1 spool of it on hand - I called ahead!  I  also called every other shop that lies between here and there to see if any of them carried it, with no luck. Oh well, a quilter's got to do what a quilter's got to do!

When I posted that I was up to the quilting on the fourth quarter, that didn't include the outside edge row that was missing the backing.  

Yesterday was the day to fix all of that.  I peeled back the top and batting, trimmed off the selvage edge, and stitched on the extra backing strip.  

It worked well! Then I re-pinned the layers and continued with the quilting.

As of this morning, I only have the last quarter to go! If I get lucky with stitching time, I will be able to join the quarters today.   The back of the joining seams will be hand stitched in place but I am considering doing the binding all by machine. 

This quilt is needing to get finished!  I am working up against two deadlines that I can't quite talk about yet.  As soon as a few things are settled, I'll share them here. It's good news - I promise!

Road trip tomorrow before the crack of dawn and I may be offline for a few days but I'll take some pictures.

Measure Twice, Cut Once!

That's the old carpenter's adage.  My version of this would be "Measure at least once".  Which brings us to:

The Tale of the Too Short Backing
I was so excited to be working on Sweet Man's 'Grey is not a Color' quilt again that I forgot the basic rule of backing. You know the one that says it must be bigger than the front.   Most of the excitement stemmed from the fact I won the backing fabric in a blog giveaway!

 Yes, 10 yards of Riley Blake granite!!  The minute I saw the giveaway, I knew this was the fabric for me specifically for this quilt.  And of course, I was right.  The powers of the Universe must have agreed because it did indeed become mine. Which meant I needed to find the project bag and get this quilt done!

I love the color, a purple-y grey.  I measured four lengths for the four quarters of the quilt, chucked them in the washer/dryer and promptly packed them to go up to the Michigan house for my last visit's sandwiching session. 

Did you catch my error yet?  No, you say?  While it's true I measured the length, I NEVER checked the width!  I just assumed at least a minimum of 42" of usable width of fabric.  That's were I made my mistake.  Never Assume Anything!!  

So what's the big deal?  You just need to add a piece to the back of each quarter?  Yes, yes I could.  But the remaining hunk of backing fabric was: a) not washed; b) not in the same state I was in and c) nowhere near my sewing machine and unable to be attached before sandwiching.

Missing something? 

What's a quilter to do?  Sandwiching anyway, deal with it later!  I made sure the shortages fell on the outside edge of the quilt and that I had plenty of backing towards the middle seams since this is a quilt as you go project.

Orange tag = which quarter this is and the outside edge

The quilting is coming along. I am onto the fourth quarter this morning - running low on thread.  It amazes me how when using a variegated thread, the light part of the thread always seems to end up in the dark fabric blocks  and the dark part of the thread ends up in the light blocks.  In between, the medium values blend beautifully! 

The thread just sinks into the backing fabric.

I'll quilt as long as the thread holds out this morning and add the missing back parts. Then there will be errands to run and thread to hunt!  
Happy April Fool's Day!

Last Day of March Recap and 2014 NewFO Link Up

March came in like a lion and is going out like a lamb or at least that's what the latest forecast said.  The temp is suppose to break 60 - I'll believe it when I see it - though a chance of rain later today.  No matter, I have a full day of errands and shopping to do, so I need to get this written and posted early.

Quilt-wise March was okay, not great, but okay.  Too bad I can't count house projects in my stats. I still have some blank canvases where there should have been designs done.  Occasionally, I need added time crunch pressure to get inspired. Not the best way to work but it happens. 

I am participating in Barbara at Cat Patches 2014 NewFO Challenge. Click here to see everyone's new projects  March NewFO Challenge and Linky Party

My March 2014 quilt stats:

1 Quilt finished - My first foray into using silk dupioni in a quilt!  I finished the piecing and machine quilted Silk Road: Spotlight.  Originally supposed to go the long-arm quilter to be eligible for a LQS show, this one turned out to be a learning opportunity.  I will be using silks again, possible mixed with cottons but definitely doing some things differently!

1 new quilt row done for LQS (Pieceful Gathering) Daring Downton Debacle Challenge - 3rd month of a 5 month project using Andover Fabrics's Downton Abbey collection - machine pieced second row completed. It's a NewFO. I made a variation of the Castle in the Air block.

 And to show the progress of this project - three rows together.

2 quilts in progress - machine quilting projects - 

The first is the quilting on the French Braid panels. This was pieced last fall and is a machine quilting NewFO in Progress. 

And then there is a NewFO from an old UFO - my Sweet Man's 'Grey is not a Color' quilt. This project was planned back in February of 2011, had exactly one quarter of the top pieced and went into the timeout box.  It was past time to get this one done. I got the remaining three quarters pieced this month and have two of those quarters quilted and am almost done with the third.  

Going to need more thread and wait until tomorrow to see the slight problem with the backing. Quilting is an Adventure!

There are more project just waiting to be started & March was suppose to be the month for them, but now April HAS to be the month for them!!

If you are keeping track, how did you do for March?

2014 Pantone Challenge Winners

 The 2014 Pantone Quilt Challenge Winners have been announced.

Nope - my Silk Road: Spotlight wasn't among the lucky few but it was FUN to compete! 

I love looking at all the other entries and getting inspired.  There are some AMAZING quilts out there in this year's Pantone color of the year - 'Radiant Orchid'. Be sure to jump over to  Pantone Quilt Entries , to check them out.  

Who knows maybe you'll be inspired to use a little Radiant Orchid' in your next quilt.  I can't wait to see what next year's color will be...maybe another quilt!

Now Under the Needle

The French Braid center panel is still hanging on the design wall.  The photos I took and posted yesterday made me realize the line of quilting I am missing on the larger braid section legs.  I added it in yellow below.

I am going to try it on a few legs but I think it will end up breaking up the space a little better.  While I was figuring that out, I had something else under the needle yesterday.

The first quarter panel of Sweet Man's 'Grey is Not a Color' is being quilted.  

First quarter of Grey is Not a Color

I am outlining each block of color and then quilting 4 lines down the center of them, using a Sulky Blendables 30 wt. cotton thread in 'Soft Blacks'

Simple straight line quilting

Sulky Blendable 30 wt. cotton 'Soft Blacks'

The quilting cannot be too dense as this needs to be a light, soft drape-y quilt when it's done. DH does not sleep under any kind of heavy blanket/comforter/quilt. I may add some additional quilting in the sashing or I may not - have to see more of the block quilting done before I decide.

Now I can alternate between quilting on both of these projects so I don't get bored with either of them.  Need to find my machine quilting zen state.

French Braid Cooking

Up on the design wall - the French Braid quilt!

You: Wait - what?  That's an older project. 

Me: Yes, yes it is.  

You: Well, why is it on the design wall? Those sections are joined into three panels already - why aren't we seeing anything new?

Me: Oh, but there is something new to them. The panels  are sandwiched and the machine quilting has begun.  Here are a few detail shots of my progress.

There are three different colors of thread so far.  Unfortunately, one of the spools was a little low on thread so I had to go thread shopping.  You can imagine how upset that made me, right? NOT!

I just LOVE YLI thread!  After trying many different kings of thread for hand quilting, I have found theirs to just rock!  It's sturdy but flexible, and does not knot or twist like some other do.  I have even used it to machine quilt.

More importantly for this project, they make wonderful machine quilting thread too.  It glides through my machine like a dream!  And it comes in solids and variegated colors.  I'm using the Mediterranean as the middle color thread in this quilt.

Mediterranean

It is a 40 wt., 3 ply thread of Egyptian cotton - with dyeing and finishing done right in North and South Carolina.   If you can't find it your LQS, you can order directly from them. Check out the  YLI Corp website for lots of great thread info, including a guide for picking the right thread for your project.

I usually buy this thread at quilt shows or wherever I spot it at a LQS, but rather than drive all over hunting it down I opted for online shopping and since I was already paying for shipping (cheaper than gas right now), a few other spools jumped into my shopping cart.

Napa Valley Wine

Nordic Fjord

There is a lot of quilting to be done on the three panels so it will be around for awhile.

In between road trips, quilting, and chores, I like to actually cook food, not just open a box and pour.  In our small kitchen (a barely 2 butts at a time space), I have a system and a rhythm to my work.  Often, this gets disrupted by extra canine helpers, who, after being repeatedly told to get out of my kitchen at or accidentally having a paw step on, finally tuck their tails and retreat to safer ground - right outside the door way.  

 Zena, however, is not canine and just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Her unique approach to a prime viewing spot was on top of the tall pantry cabinet in the dining room, right outside the door to the kitchen.   I just had to laugh.