Travelling with the Old Crank

Singer 99 handcrank from the late 1930's.

 I took it along to my daughter's college apartment for the long weekend to make some covers for the arms of the living room chairs.  (They were wearing a definitely amateur fix.)

 I had quilted the yardage at home before I went.  She and the young woman who will be her roommate for this coming year share some favorite colors--most notably that pale teal or aquamarine.  My Sweet Teen is taking a summer class, working as a summer resident hall assistant, and working in the materials science and engineering department. (And I have a bit less than six weeks to be able to call her a Sweet Teen.  Where have these years gone?!)

This is one of the lovely covers on the chairs--corduroy and safety pins.

All four arms look like this:

Now they look a lot better!

That little 99 handcrank was amazing (as well as quiet).  I took along some size 16 and 18 needles, but it did a great job with the 14s I use for most piecing and quilting. However, the next time I plan to sew while visiting her, I'll take a TV table so I'll be cranking at a more comfortable height.

And in completing these, I fell in love with bias binding all over again!  (We usually use straight binding for our prayer quilts.)

Our solution for the really ugly sofa was to cover it with a large cotton painter's canvas from Harbor Freight.  Before I took the large one she had a smaller one that covered only part of the sofa.  She and her friends made some "chocolate bowls" last week, forming the bowls around balloons. One exploded, creating a chocolate mess on the canvas.  All the chocolate washed out and the canvas is whiter and had a lovely hand, so I'm sure she'll be willing to launder the new one too.  She thought she wanted the same covers for the sofa, but when we put the chair covers on the sofa over the canvas, we didn't really like them, so at some point I may make her some in an off white or cream color.  By happy coincidence, when I'd purchased some cooking tools for her kitchen, the store had some lovely sea-colored melamine, so I bought two dinner plates, two salad plates, and two bowls.  The smaller plates were the perfect size for a pattern for the front piece on each cover!

I'm eager to do some more quilting, but I spent this morning and a good hunk of the afternoon in Albuquerque getting our office ready to paint.  And I'll be back there to paint tomorrow.  Not nearly as much fun as quilting! But the robin's egg blue we chose will make our office environment a lot more soothing than the multiple shades of white and water stains in there right now!

Happy quiltmaking and knitting,