Summer in the West

We are spending another summer out West.  This time we are in Oregon, making memories with my sister and her family!  Eight kids, seven adults, three pools, two trampolines and one BIG house makes for a hectic and fun summer!

It has been HOT so far.  A week of mid- to upper 90's and a couple days we hit 100 degrees, so there's no shortage of sun around here.  Above is a picture my nephew on the Oregon coast, where it was almost 30 degrees cooler last week.

As is my M.O., shortly after arriving in town, I hit a couple of the local thrift stores in search of quilty things, and wouldn't you know it?  I found a sewing machine to use for the summer :)  The king size quilt top I made for my sister has been sitting in a box for a year and a half, waiting to get bound after it was quilted by a local with a long arm machine.  My little project during my visit is to bind it for her, so I needed a machine, right?  Well, I probably should have just borrowed one from someone in town, but then how can you resist a bargain like this... Anyhow, back to the thrift store...  After 5 minutes of wandering around the store I see someone pushing a shopping cart full of sewing machines toward the housewares section.  Now that was like a Largemouth Bass seeing a frog swim by!!!  I stalked him until he began unloading his treasures.  One of the first things he put on the shelf was this Bernina 1000 Designer machine.

Similar to the still-in-production Bernina 1008, this mechanical machine is prized by the Amish and Mennonite communities because the motors can be removed and the machines worked with a treadle- the main difference between mine and the 1008 is that mine was made in Switzerland rather than Thailand.

I snatched it up lickety-split, and after a quick plug-in test, I brought it home.  It doesn't have an extension table or any feet, and the bulb was burnt out, but it ran in the store so I figured it was worth dropping $30 in hopes that it worked OK.

After a stop at the local Bernina dealer I got a piecing foot ($5) and some jealous Oohhhs and Aahhhs from the technician, who said it was worth $1000!!! That was welcome news, as I already have a 440 QE at home, and don't really want to lug this on the plane ride home!

After the initial test run at home, it emitted this electrical burning smell and the bulb didn't work, so I brought it in to the technician, who said it wasn't just a burnt out bulb, but an electrical problem, which could be dangerous if not fixed.  So...$121 later it's tuned, purring like a kitten and...still smelling like a small electrical fire!  I will take it back in when I finish my goal project of binding my sister's quilt.

Here's the quilt on the long arm, with just a few stitches finished.  Duck Duck Berry Duck is the name of this quilt, and here's a blog post about it.  It looks great with a generic flame-like quilt pattern (sister didn't want any flowers) in green.  On second thought, I should have gone with a yellow thread, but live and learn- I think the green detracts a little from the quilt top design, but that's only a minor gripe.  It looks fantastic, and even better to have such a large top quilted by someone else!!!  It gives me a headache imagining doing that on my home machine...NO THANKS!

I also completed a few gift projects for my daughter and her cousins: the girls got FROZEN tube-top dresses and the boys got custom pillowcases (two got Pokeman fabric and one got antique cars and baseballs).  Picture to come!

Pop Mod Delivered.

Duck Duck Berry Duck was gifted on Wednesday.  It's so much fun to present a finished project to someone...especially when it is a surprise!
My sister loved her new quilt top.  She's going to have it quilted in Eugene, OR, where she lives.

Here it is!  My wife and I are doing our best to unfurl it, but the ceilings in my parents' home aren't high enough to open it up completely.  Hopefully my sister will do a photo shoot when it has been quilted.  You can also see some of the left over wrapping paper and boxes from Christmas morning.  With 10 grandkids in town, it was quite a zoo all week, but the "animals" has so much fun together!  Hope your Christmas was merry and bright (and white, as was ours in Minneapolis).

Home For the Finish!

I had a wonderful time in Lynchburg, both singing and sewing!  Although I wasn't sewing with my Singer, I got a lot done on my Christmas gift quilt, which I am calling Duck Duck Berry Duck (explanation will follow).

The two big challenges for me on this piece were the curves and the sheer size of the quilt (it is a king size quilt measuring 103" x 109").  As for the curves, I have to say it was a challenge, but a fun one.  I don't repeat quilt patterns yet, as I have so many to try for the first time, and this variation on the drunkard path was a perfect choice.

A crummy picture, I'll admit, but without my Nikon on the road, the camera phone was pushed to its limits!  The pattern is Pop Mod, and it didn't have a King sized pattern, so I improvised, adding extra squares all the way around the Queen version.  This quilt was so big that I couldn't lay out all the squares on my living room floor as I usually do to finalize configuration.  I had to build it in two halves, then join them at the very end.

...I know, another crummy picture.  This time I was at home and just too lazy to get out the Nikon.  Though you can't get much of a feel for the scale, the "O" block is 17.5" square, so the quilt is almost 9ft across.  This is the top half being put together before joining the blocks.

Last cell phone pic...  This is the bottom half all pieced together.  I am really getting jazzed now!  The bottom half went a bit faster, as it was a few blocks shorter.  When I finally finished it I wanted to crack open a bottle of Champagne or something!

Ah, finally the DSLR...sorry to make you suffer in those last few photos :)  As you can see, I can't even get it all in this wide-angle lens shot, and it creeps up to the couch because my floor can't contain it!  So pleased with the results, though. You might notice that this is just a top, and not a finished quilt.  My only regret is that I just can't quilt this thing on my little home machine.  My sister lives in Oregon, where there are plenty of great long arm quilters, so I'm sure that will be in good hands.  It will be weird to "collaborate" on this quilt, and not bind it myself or see the finished product, but that's just how it's gonna have to go this time around.  The flip side of that is my sis can pick her own quilting pattern!

At the suggestion of a super knowledgeable and helpful friend of a friend quilter (Eastern PA quilter Sharon Rehrig), I learned that I should stabilize the edges of the quilt by stay stitching around the border.

This simple step of stitching very close to the edge (1/8-1/16th of an inch) will help protect it while it gets groped between now and the long arm quilter.  That was a big concern of mine, but no longer :)

One thing that really excited me with this project was that, while I was so worried about getting my curves right, I seemed to have mastered the art of squaring up my corners!  For me, ironing seams closed and very precise pinning does the trick.  Of course, the curves are a work in progress, but those imperfections didn't bother me much.  This is a design I could see myself doing again, so the experience gained from this giant will help next time.

So, my favorite part about the quilt is how personal the design is to the recipient!  When I saw the Pop Mod design, I knew it was for Sheree.  She lives in Eugene, Oregon and is a huge Ducks fan.  School colors are Green and Yellow, and the Pop Mod block looks eerily similar to the Oregon Duck logo.

 Probably would have looked more like it if I had used solids, but I like my version because it's more of a quilt with subtle suggestions of the logo, not a blatant hijacking of copyrighted material :)
So I clearly used Duck colors and logo for inspiration, but decided to add the row of berry flavor to break up the color scheme.  Green and yellow aren't the splashiest of color combos, so the pinks/purples/berries help ad that "pop" of color in this Pop Mod!

I might add a better pic of Duck Duck Berry Duck when we get to Minnesota and I have some help holding it up in a bigger space.  Oh, and the name...  As you may or may not know, Minnesota has an unusual name for a child's game called "Duck Duck Goose".  When we Minnesotans leave the sacred borders of this frozen tundra, we eventually learn that our beloved game of "Duck Duck Grey Duck" only exists in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.  Everyone else calls it "Duck Duck Goose".  So, the name reflects my sister's roots as a Minnesotan.  In addition, each line of "O"s in the quilt also represents the University of Oregon Ducks, but of course the pattern is broken by that berry chain of "O"s, therefore Duck Duck Berry Duck.

Another Road Game

On the Road again, this time Lynchburg, VA.  I am singing Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi by Puccini.  It's a fun show written for all of the Met's character singers, so it's a real ensemble opera.

Well, I am working on a Pop Mod quilt (design by Julie from Distant Pickles) for a king size finish for Christmas, but since I am on the road for two weeks, thought I would take some quilting work on the road with me.  I precut all of my 4" x 4" squares so I could trace and cut my drunkard path squares while on the road, then put it together when I got home.  Well, with LOTS of free time on this job, I finished all of my tracing and cutting in a few days, so I tapped the opera patron crowd for a loaner sewing machine, and am now almost done piecing together my 360 drunkard path squares!

Here's my Janome "Jem Gold" surrounded by 100 finished drunkard path squares (un-ironed).  Thanks so much to Polly for lending me this machine for my stay!  So nice to work with a modern machine.  I think it is making me want to trade in my not-so-trusty Singer for something with a more consistent stitch which is quiet and smooth-running.  Enough about the machine, though.

Here's the layout of the Pop Mod block, which will have 22 of these blocks, plus a dozen or so partial blocks.  Since I don't have my cutting tools with me, I won't be finishing the blocks or top 'til I get home.

The background is green, with either purple or yellow focal fabric (this one has the purple focal fabric).  Now that I look at the pic, though, two of the "green" squares look yellow in the picture.  Another reason I recommend taking pictures of your fabrics and blocks before assembly!