Nw OSM - Part 2

Okay, I've had quite a few e-mails from people with information about my new old-sewing-machine. I phoned my friend, and she will look for the power cord for me. Therefore, I will use this lovely Singer 15-91, which is gear driven rather than belt driven, to do some free-motion machine quilting--as soon as I have a chance to pick up the cord and to go purchase some more Tri-Flow and do some minor servicing.
I'll keep looking for a Singer 15-90 or a Japanese clone that I can convert to a treadle. Or maybe I'll get lucky and someone with a rotary Singer treadle will offer me a machine. (The reason I think I need a rotary bobbin is that those bobbins hold a lot more thread than the spindle type; free motion quilting, especially the fancy feathers I love quilting, takes a lot of thread!) However, since I've spent a good six months trying to find one, I suspect I will have to keep looking for a machine I can convert.

New OSM (Old Sewing Machine)

This is the Old Sewing Machine that came home with me today. Actually, it's not all that old--1951. One of my friends purchased it ten years later in Palo Alto, CA (she was a student at Stanford) to make her wedding dress.

It has a striated face plate with the tension control on the rear.
It has the electrical posts for the same kind of plug and footcontrol as my Featherweight, but the power cord that goes to the outlet is missing, so I'm not sure what it looks like.




It has a cord going from the motor down through the plate on the right to the foot control.

The cord to the foot control is worn through where it enters the button-type foot control, so I don't feel I can plug it in, and I'm not sure if just binding it with electrical tape would make it safe enough. (At the moment, it's a moot point since I do not have the cord that goes from the machine to the electrical outlet.)





Here's a view from the top of the machine that shows the motor and where it's screwed onto the machine.

There is no belt. My friends said the gears were directly driven by the motor. I do not know how this affects the fact that I'd like to convert it to a treadle.

Anyway, there is a lot more I'd like to learn about this machine, and I welcome comments.

Thread, Needles, and Batts for Quilting

I've been asked about needles and thread for machine quilting.
First, most often I quilt on the Viking/Huskvarna model 6430 home sewing machine I purchased after graduating from college. Occasionally I quilt on the model 6020 I purchased a couple of years ago from a lovely lady who was moving with her husband into assisted living.
For quilting, I love shiny threads; I think they make feathers and other decorative yet functional quilting just glow. One of my favorites is Fil-Tec Glide thread. These threads really do glide through the needles, and they come on 5000 meter spools. When using this thread, I sometimes use the same thread in the bobbin or, if the backing I've made for the quilt is fairly busy, I use Superior Threads Bottom Line, which I also use on the top when outlining the print of pictorial or toile fabrics. Unfortunately, the person from whom I purchase most of my threads has found the demand for Fil-Tec threads to be so low that she's discontinued them so she can use the space for items that are in greater demand.

The needles: Schmetz size 90 topstitch or jeans needles. Sometimes when I use Warm'n'Natural batting for Victory Quilts, I need to switch to size 100 needles. I understand that long-arm quilting machines use much larger needles. In fact, it was Betty Standiferd who is the longarm quilter for Southwest Decoratives -- http://www.swdecoratives.com -- who first showed me the needles the longarms use who convinced me to use jeans needles.

My favorite quilt batts are Quilter's Dream Request and Mountain Mist Rose. We use Warm'n'Natural for Victory Quilts because we are able to order it on rolls and cut pieces as we need them; however, the batting is heavier and the finished quilts stiffer than with my favorite batts. We haven't been able to find the Dream or Rose batts on large rolls.
For my friend's Tuscany quilt I used a 50% bamboo/50% cotton batt. I'll be interested in hearing how it holds up, since it was quite expensive.

And, yes, I just love quilting feathers--to such an extent that some of my quilts should have been named "Tickled to Death"!

Another Amazing Rain Shower

Alexandra managed to catch another amazing rainshower this week. Yes, the foreground is blurred because we were in the car--and I didn't stop because we were late for an appointment.
I love these sights!
Alexandra is now registered for high school and ready to start Band Camp Monday morning.
I'm not ready for her to be in high school, but I suspect I will always feel the years pass toooooo
quickly.

Dresden Plates

This is the Dresden Plate quilt Judy R made for our church's Victory Quilts Ministry. She does beautiful work, and her artist's eye is always evident--as is the fact that she has been piecing for several years now.
She said she just wasn't sure how to quilt all those open spaces, so I begged her to let me be the quilter. I quilted with shiny gold Fil-Tec thread and a lovely bluish-green thread I've had for years, and as usual all the quilting was done freehand with nothing marked on the quilt top so I could have total freedom. The ribbons quilted on the plate sections are just barely visible--but it's easy to right-click on any photo, open it in a new tab or window, and see a larger closeup view.

If the binding gets finished, this quilt will be dedicated at our next quilt dedication Sunday, August 9 at our traditional and contemporary services.
I'm hoping I'll be able to have one or two quilts ready by then, although I have a tremendous number of things to accomplish before my school year begins August 10.
The good news about my school year is that I'll be teaching students with severe and profound disabilities as well as one section of reading to kids with far less severe disabilities. As is true every year, it's impossible to predict what the year will be like or what I'll actually be able to do to help many of my students--which could be a great challenge given the change in the way we must submit lesson plans. I'll adjust. One of the things I like about special education almost as much as I like the kids is the fact that every year is new and different.

Double Rain Showers

I wanted to join this at the end of the last post, but it didn't work. So....here's a new post. This is a sight I have never before seen. One of the wonderful things about living in the Southwest is that sometimes one can see a storm cloud just drop its rain. However, I've only caught a couple of pictures of such sights in all the years I've lived out here. Yesterday, on the way home from church, we saw these two storm clouds dropping their rain at the same time--and, I caught it with the camera. What a lucky day!
By the time we reached home, the two clouds had joined into one, so I'm very, very glad the camera was in my bag!
I love monsoon season--except when we lose electrical power!

As always, for a larger view, you can right click on the photo and open it in a larger format in a new tab or new window.

More Summer Song

Here's a picture of Ms. Bobbie's Summer Song on the patio of her lovely garden. (See those lovely pavers? Over 20 years ago she hauled them in, cut and arranged them--something it had never occurred to me that I could do myself!)

This is a view of about 1/4 of the quilt. At one point I wished I had had more of the brown floral and that I had used it to set all four strips of whirligigs. I just love the huge stripe Robin designed for this fabric line. Although I used only three due to limitations in the amount of fabric I had available, there are four stripes across the width of the goods. (I also wished I had bought two yards instead of just a yard and a half. If I'd had more, I'd have run the stripes vertically instead of horizontally.)
This view shows the wonderful backing I found for this quilt--picks up all the colors but reflects a slightly different time period.

And here's one final view of the quilting on the red border--so much fun to do!

Border Inspiration for Summer Song

As I was quilting the border for a small quilt [Mrs. Lebo's Kitchen], I knew I wanted to make a quilt with a red border with a fancy feather.

I had taken several fabrics from Robin Pandolph's Chateau Rococco Line for Free Spirit--so I purchased more and set about making whirligigs that I could set between borders.
Here's the finished quilt--I finished it while Alexandra and Ms. Bobbie went to see the premier of the new Harry Potter movie. Then we rushed outside and held it so I could get some pictures. This is the only complete view I have--and will not have a chance to get more since the quilt now resides in Tennessee.

Here's a detail of the gold feather quilting on the red border. (I used a gold Fil-tec thread.)

I will post more photos with details later.

Dora, the quilter

Quilt Story - Summer Saga Backing

Not much color in today's post except for the quilt's midsection, above. To see the details of the quilting on the photos of the back below, right clicking on each photo and opening in a new window or tab will yield a copy of the photo in a larger format.

Like all my machine quilts, this was quilted on my Viking/Husqvarna model 6430 purchased about a year after I graduated from college. I pieced it on my Singer Featherweight 221. (I'm still looking for a treadle machine so that I can continue to work when our power goes off--which can be frequently since our street does not have three-phase electrical lines and we're on an rural electrical co-op which gets its power from other suppliers.) All these designs are done freehand, nothing marked on the fabric--feed dogs down, many different threads, Schmetz size 90 and 100 top stitch and jeans needles. For piecing and bobbin thread on the back of the quilt I used Superior Threads Bottom Line thread.
Enjoy!

Summer Saga I - Chapter 3 (Sorta)

It would be incredibly difficult not to be inspired by scenes like these. I moved to the desert from this region 21 years ago. While I don't miss having to sweep pine pollen from my car before I can drive it every spring, I do sometimes miss the green--and the trees--and the oldest mountains on Earth. Alexandra had seen the green of the Midwest, including the green hills of Wisconsin, but until we were here, she'd never really understood what the Appalachians are like. Now she does.

This was the back porch of the cabin the day I was auditioning block positions. When it was cool enough or when rain was not blowing onto the porch, I pieced and quilted there too. The day I sewed the blocks into the layout, some pretty strong breezes came up, so I decided I'd better take some photos, just in case the sheet I placed on top of the layout was blown off.

Here's to upper section of the finished quilt.
I took photos of every part of the quilt--I thought--but now realize I wish I had taken more--of course!

And here's the quilt on the porch swing:

My Friend Cindy

My friend Cindy has cancer. She has a husband and ten kids. She's a Christian. Her challenges have been great lately, and she still maintains a thankful heart.

Years ago when my daughter and I were experiencing monumental challenges, Cindy was one of the "Amazing Moms" who helped us get through them.

Her blog is at:
http://faithfulpromises.blogspot.com/

Linny is spearheading a day of prayer and fasting for Cindy. You can read about it here: http://aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com/2009/07/would-you-help-me-please.html

Please join us in praying that Cindy will be healed so that God will be glorified and her children and husband will continue to live daily with the the thousands of big and little things she does that make her the Amazing Mom she is.

Dora, the quilter

Quilt Story I - Summer Saga Details

This post has lots and lots of photos, so it will take a while to load, especially on dial-up.

Most often, this is part of the view that greeted me between six and seven a.m. when I carried my cup of coffee out to the front porch. The fog would burn off a little later in the day, but early on I loved sitting and listening and watching the surroundings. Several days there was a ground hog in the field across the road--first a very large one, later a small one. We joked that Alexandra should try getting up early, borrowing a rifle from the neighbor who had been trying to get those guys to go elsewhere, and seeing if she could scare them off. Of course, that didn't happen!

In both the start-to-finish quilts I made while there, I used Quilter's Dream, Request batting. I do love that batting! (I also often use Mountain Mist Rose.) While there was lots of vegetation in many of these prints, I did manage to use only two prints with flowers. Enjoy!

Dora, the quilter

Quilt Story I - The First Summer Saga Chapter

The finished quilt, hanging off the porch at the cabin. I do have photos with more detail, but for today, I wanted to show how I quilted the scenes that I made into part of the body of the quilt. Apparently I didn't get or else deleted the scene where they were whitewashing Aunt Polly's fence, and that was my favorite!

Here's the fishing scene followed by the flying geese and four patches that help it fit into the body of the quilt.















Here are some other scenes and the quilting I used to highlight them.
















I used Superior's Bottom Line thread in tan to highlight those scenes because I wanted a very fine thread that would almost disappear into the fabric. In the rest of the quilt I used a wide variety of Sulky, Superior Rainbows, and Fil-Tec thread.

I've tried to load these photos for two days and just kept getting errors, so I hope we can be error free today.

Later, I'll show details of the quilting in other areas of this quilt, but right now it's bath-time because I'm exhausted from cleaning and moving furniture. Alexandra decided that would be a great project for our first week home. I'll be thrilled when we're done and can begin to enjoy the "new" spaces. She grossly under-estimated the amount of time it would take (just like her mama!), and then she managed to get a deep cut on her thumb while opening a can (no stitches, just butterflies), so we're plugging away quite slowly. But now we need baths so we can fix a quick supper and head off to church for choir practice and youth group.

I'll try to add more pictures to the story of this quilt tomorrow!

Dora, the quilter