Bucket List Item Procured!

One of the biggest surprises for me in 2018 was my purchase of a used quilting machine. It all came about in what felt like a magical way. I'd only been looking and dreaming about owning a quilting machine for over 20 years. Every once in a while I'd check online listings for machines. On this one day, I decided I'd check Facebook Marketplace. I saw a new listing for a complete setup, and it was located in my area. The price was good. I contacted the seller and we went to take a look at everything. The machine belonged to his mother, who had died over a year ago. It had been sitting in an empty house all that time. There were a few less than perfect spot. Dogs had chewed on the wooden frame. Rodents had chewed the power cord for the machine. In spite of those few issues, I fell in love.

We heard more of the story from the son. His mother had purchased the setup at a Houston Quilt Show (several years back). For a couple of reasons (one of them being that she got sick), she never got the chance to actually use the machine. I wanted a little time to research the machine and the frame, and to check reviews for possible issues with the machine. I told him I'd let him know in a couple of days if I wanted the machine. He'd only had one other person come to look at the machine and she'd decided it was too heavy for her to manage.

I knew I was entering a personal danger zone because the guy was nice, he had a sweet family, and I was in his mother's house with loads of evidence of her craftiness (thread! fabrics! yarn! patterns! loads of stuff!) and I was hearing this sweet woman's stories--and identifying with her. I needed a little space to keep myself from saying I'd take all the things for no other reason than there was a sweet story involved! So I went home to think about it. I dreamed about it and dug around on the internet for more information. I called a couple of days later to tell him I wanted it. I'd asked for a reduction in price, and we "met in the middle" on that request. In retrospect, I could have been less enthusiastic and waited another week or two. By then he might have wanted to pay me to take it off his hands! But I didn't want to stick it to him, and he didn't want to stick it to me. We both got a fair deal.

We picked most of the equipment up the day after Thanksgiving. When I started putting things back together I noticed a few (important!) things missing. For instance, the presser foot was nowhere to be found. Twice, he texted me back to let me know he'd found more things that went with the machine, including the missing presser foot!

Over my Christmas break, I worked on putting everything back together. I watched my DVDs on how to load the quilt and adjust the machine. I had a DVD for the machine and a DVD for the frame. Both DVDs had differing instructions for loading the quilt. It took me several tries (and left me with sore and pin pricked fingers) to get the practice fabric loaded. Loading the quilt is the most important and time consuming part of the whole deal. I had a few mishaps with the practice fabric, one of them being that I kept forgetting to put the blankety blank presser foot down! I've used sewing machines all my life. This was a mistake I ought not to have been making!

I finished my practice piece and decided to "go big or go home" so I loaded one of my quilt tops on the frame. Sure enough, I forgot to put the presser foot down a couple of times. I had to rip those stitches out and begin again. But it all worked out and I was able to complete my first actual quilt top! There is only one small area that should have had a little more quilting because I'd....wait for it...forgotten to put the presser foot down and didn't realize it until I took the quilt off the frame. I'll fix that in some less than perfect way. The good news is, the machine tries to tell me when the presser foot is up and I'm learning to recognize that sound sooner rather than later. I'll get into a very precise order of action that will help me remember to put the presser foot down. Everything is so new at this point and there are so many details to remember before starting to quilt.

I'm going to name her, the machine, but I haven't thought of anything yet. I thought about naming her after the original owner but that seems a little weird.

She's not the latest and greatest model but she is simple and easy to maintain. She's also surprisingly easy to maneuver! I have a stitch regulator, but alas, the rodents chewed the cords on that too. For now, I am learning to regulate my own stitches. Maybe one day I'll see if someone can fix the cords for me. Or maybe not.

This room was a bedroom added on to my grandparents' house. A couple years ago, my uncle and cousin detached the room from the house, pushed a trailer underneath the room and hauled it up to our property. My grandmother kept her quilting frames in this room. She would have been tickled pink to see this setup and to know I am sewing in the same space she sewed in.

The red strip is the side border of the quilt. The purple is near the top. The edges are the hardest part for me to sew right now. There is too much thinking involved and I tend to slow down, which messes up the stitches. But practice will bring progress!

And here is my first completed machine quilted quilt! All that is left to do is to put on the binding. My time ran out so that project will be waiting for me when I return.

Here in FunkyTown...

I've been in a bit of a funk for a while now. Can't decide what the problem is. I keep showing up here sporadically to bemoan the fact that I am in a funk.

I'm still sewing a bit, finishing old projects and trying to decide what I'm going to do about getting the quilt tops quilted. One does not make deals with God but I've jokingly told my parents I hope to live long enough to be able to use up all my fabric. And that I'm hedging my bets for a long life by buying more fabric here and there! I've found some bargains at a couple of local estate sales. I'm not really buying up too much fabric. Mostly I'm only buying what can be considered too good of a deal to pass up. I do not want a big pile of fabric to have to figure out where to put and how to use.

Mostly I'm sewing at our little place in the country, on the weekends. Here at home I'm trying to get back into a pattern of writing in my journal and doing artsy type projects. I'd like to begin to meditate again. Sometimes I'm lazy and undisciplined, and I allow myself to be distracted by time suckers like Facebook.

The funks, they come and they go. I guess that's the good news. The feeling is not permanent and will eventually pass.

This is not an old project. It's new. My aunt gave me the fabric that was already cut in strips. The pattern is a rail fence pattern. When I got it all put together, she found the border fabric and the black in her stash and gave them to me. I can't remember if I have a backing fabric ready for this one or not. I hope to quilt this one myself on my regular sewing machine.

I'm kind of already thinking about next year. 2017 feels like it has flown by and I can't remember half of what has happened in the past year. I keep having really good ideas about how I want to do a better job of living in 2018. One thing for sure, I'd like to live more mindfully. And not to wile away so many of my hours poking around the internet. In the meantime, I'd like to ground myself in what remains of 2017 and to savor the days I have now.

Two-fer

It may just be a baseless superstition but another thing that seems to happen when you don't show up on your blog for a while is that you get spammy comments. I had one and deleted it. Hopefully that will be the end of that.

Today's post will be a two-fer and then I might be done for a while with posting older projects that I've finished.

First up is one that is called "Endless Wells" (or maybe "Hidden Wells," I never can remember). Many years ago, our Kroger's had fabric and other WalMart type things that were not typical of grocery stores. When they decided to quit carrying fabric, they had a huge clearance sale. I can remember my mother and I went more than once to gather the bargains. I still have fabric from those excursions!

This one was a pain in the "uh-huh" because of the bias cuts. I had to sew four strips together, then cut squares out of the strips, then cut the squares into four pieces (cutting diagonally, which caused the fabric to stretch) and then put them back together again. I'm afraid my piecing skills are definitely not exemplary in this quilt. But it is done, and I'm happy! You can't see it very well, but the backing fabric is a rust and blue fabric with paisleys.

This quilt was also made with Kroger sale fabric. I started it sometime in the middle seventies. It was a quilt I was making for my husband. About three fourths of it is hand quilted. I got impatient and wanted the project to be completed so I practiced my free motion quilting on the remaining squares. Again, this is not an exemplary representative of my quilting skills! But it is done, and I am happy!

This is another one of those areas where some of my treatment for some of my cancer extracts an ongoing price from me. Because of chemo induced neuropathy and stiffness in my finger joints caused by the medicine that is supposed to be an extra protection against the breast cancer coming back, I don't think I could ever really do the kind of fine motor movement needed to hand quilt. Acceptance is good. Gratitude is also good. It's really a small price to pay for survival. So, cut my losses and move on (one of the few areas in my life where I can actually do that!).

I've still got a few tops to go that were the result of block swaps done when we were living in Houston and I was a member of a quilting guild. I think I counted eight or nine more tops that are ready and waiting to be quilted. I need to get batting and backing fabric for most of them. And maybe money to pay someone to long arm quilt them if my own free motion quilting skills do not improve. But they will improve. I need to practice.

And I need to not be afraid of messing them up. Or of them not being perfect. I need to not let my fear paralyze me. That's true in quilting and in life, right?

Back Again

When I don't show up regularly for my blog, I forget what I've told and shown. I know I haven't told that I went to the Houston Quilt Show this past weekend. I'd been wanting to go, maybe almost since the first time they ever did the show. But then I went through a phase where I wasn't quilting/sewing and I lost interest in going, even though it was on my unofficial bucket list I keep inside my head.

I wanted mostly to go this year to try out different kinds of quilting machines because maybe one day owning a quilting machine is another item on my unofficial bucket list I keep inside my head. I got to try out several different kinds and brands. I was able to determine a couple of choices I did not want. I wasn't ready to buy but maybe eventually I will get one. I remain ever hopeful. And I can hope for years!

I thought, as we left the quilt show on Saturday afternoon that I'd seen it once and that was enough. Sunday morning, I thought how I'd like to go back next year. We shall see what I do.

Today at work I saw a student who reminded me a lot of my son. He had the same build my son had and the angularity of his face was similar. That brought on a deep yearning for my son. Yearning is a difficult and terrible feeling. I do miss him.

I found these blocks in my cedar chest. I could not remember sewing them together, much less buying the fabric. All that white, and the delicate look of the quilt is not my typical style. And yellow and pink combined? That's not me either. I do love paisleys so there is that. Maybe that what's drew me to this fabric choice.

My son was still alive when I started this quilt. I still had a disease free colon. I hadn't yet tasted cancer. Maybe this quilt was me back in the day, before these things, but I'm no longer anywhere near being this delicate in my present life. Frankly, sometimes I think of this as "soft me" and I think of my current self as my "not so soft me." Maybe I'll add a touch of gray to the borders of this quilt, maybe as a private symbol for me, to remind myself that I've been through some things and I've come out from those things a stronger person. There is still work to be done on this quilt, just as there is still work to be done on me, or growth to be had.

Finishing Projects

I haven't been around much lately. I've been trying to figure out why I started blogging in the first place, and whether or not I want to continue. Just blogging for the sake of blogging isn't so much "The Thing" anymore. Most of my bloggy friends don't blog regularly anymore.

I think I want to continue to blog, and to use this as one way for me to say, "I was here," and this are the things I see from my perspective. It doesn't have to be great writing, it's mostly for me. Maybe I'm leaving a trail for older me to know younger me.

So, I've been sewing quilt tops and trying to learn to do free motion quilting on my regular sewing machine. Right now I have several tops done but I need to get batting and backing fabric to finish them.

Here's one of the first ones I tried to do free motion quilting on. There's a pretty big learning curve and I think it's going to take a lot of practice but I think maybe I can learn to do it well enough to satisfy myself. These are blocks I had left over from a block exchange I did over 20 years ago! If you could look closely enough you would see the spots where I just totally missed the mark with my quilting. But there are also hopeful spots that look fairly good.

I was able to use fabric I already had for the borders and backing on this one. The backing is left over from projects I did in my first child's nursery.

I have more to show but I'll spread them out a bit. I'm planning to go to the Houston Quilt Show this weekend. to look at sit down quilting machines. I'm not ready to buy but they will have a lot of representatives from different brands there and I can try them out and hone in on what I want.

Not Sure What Bit Me

For a long time now, I've sorely neglected my house keeping tasks. There are some legitimate reasons for this, and some not so legitimate reasons. But during the month of June several things transpired and I cleaned house (or I began to work on cleaning house). I don't fully understand what happened.

I'd started doing Morning Pages (a la Julia Cameron) again and the condition of the house was one of the themes that kept coming up. Also, a while back, one of my grad student friends asked me when I cleaned house. I had to admit to myself (and to her) that I didn't, which made me feel decidedly not adult.

A couple of weeks ago, we had Tropical Storm Cindy come through. She was supposed to be very bad. We got two days off due to the wind and the rain that was coming through. Cindy was not as bad here as was predicted. But I was home alone (hubby was not given the day off due to weather) and what else was I going to do do? Being home alone on a rainy day provides a prime cleaning opportunity.

So I worked in my den and in my foyer. I threw stuff away. I put stuff away. I dusted. I vacuumed. I rearranged the furniture. I rearranged the pictures on the wall. I decorated. I cannot tell you how long it has been since I even cared about decorating. I was so very pleased with myself. I looked forward to my next weekend off so I could continue to get things done that had not been done in far too long. It made me happy. It made me wonder what the heck had gotten into me. I even cut my long weekend short to be home and clean some more.

Things are still far from perfect. There is still much to be done. But I've made a start and I hope to keep on moving forward.

Also, another odd thing. Today I pulled out a quilt I'd been working on. I was disappointed with the way it looked because I'd gotten somehow mixed up with my pattern. I sewed the two patchwork pieces back together and added a border at the top and at the bottom. I'm planning on adding another border around all four sides. It didn't turn out exactly like I'd hoped but it's a pretty good "save" if I do say so myself.

Perfection is overrated. Good enough is good enough. And practice makes progress. That's the biggest thing I need to remember, whether I am cleaning house or sewing a quilt top: don't get overwhelmed by what is left to do. Savor the progress you have made. And keep moving forward.

I'll show you a picture of my quilt top but I'm not yet ready to share house photos. Just believe me when I say it was bad and now it is better.

I"m not a big John Maxwell fan, but I've had this quote in my art room for several months now. It resonated with me when I saw it. I've not been too good at staying consistent with many small disciplines. I'll have to do better if I want not to lose ground and to keep moving forward.