Dot to Dot quilting, Ruler Work and dollar store craft

Finally, the second L Block quilt from the hearts2hands virtual retreat has been quilted.  I attempted some Dot to Dot quilting in the smaller squares.  That was fun.  Of course I had to do it the hard way.  Because of the pattern I chose, the thread had to be secured with each square. But it's now a habit to secure the threads properly at the beginning and when ending the quilting.  And that's always a good habit to get into.

The large centre block in this quilt was my first attempt at "real" ruler work. 

Every time I tried to practice ruler work, either the thread broke, didn't make a stitch, or the foot would fall off in the middle of the seam.

 I finally watched a video for installing a ruler foot from a different company.  They add a washer between the screw that holds the foot in place and the foot.  Why not give that a try?  There are a lot of small washers left over from putting my Grace frame together (don't ask).  Well that solved the problem of the foot falling off all the time.

 Then I decided to try lowering the foot to the height of a dime instead of the recommended height.  All issues resolved!  A bit of playing around with the tension and I now have a great stitch when doing ruler work.  And ruler work is as much fun as everyone told me it was!  This photo shows the quilting a bit better:

This shows what the quilt really looks like:

The quilt is made from one piece of fabric using both the front and back of the material. 

Now for the fun find at the local dollar store:

Ever bring back brochures, resort maps post cards and the like from your vacations?  Turn them into souvenir cups.  The Dollar Tree had these plastic cups on sale for $1.25.  Remove the lids, twist to separate the two layers of plastic, remove the paper "template", fussy cut from the maps and brochures.  And this is what you get:

These two cups even show the path from the main building that we travelled to get to our rooms.

I know some who use their kids artwork in these cups.  A fun project to give the Grandparents.  Unfortunately the cups cannot go into the microwave.  That's okay.  We all need to drink more water anyway.

I almost forgot...we have an addition to our collection of sewing machines:

Th

This is one of the few machines where DH and I do not agree on the probable date it was made.  I'm saying late 1800's.  DH says around 1910.  It makes a beautiful stitch.  Unfortunately the needles for this machine are no longer made.  So I won't be able to play with it as much as I'd like.