Catching up in the sewing room news

June must have been a busy month.  I forgot to post anything!

Sew...on the quilting front, not only am I caught up on my Add A Boarder A Month project, I've finished July's as well.  Confession time.  I was behind on this project and needed to add May and June's borders.  I figured since I had the fabric and the project out I may as well do July's as well.  So I'm good until August.  And August will be a plain border.

I'm happy with how this is turning out.  But coming up with borders that will work with the fabric I have is going to be a challenge. 

I'm keeping up with the 365 Block of the Day project.  So far. 

There are 5, 6 or 10 projects on the go (probably more) that I keep forgetting about.

I'm really liking my sewing machine island from the last re-organization of my sewing room.  Having three sewing stations in the centre of the room has been working great.  Each machine is set up for a different part of the quilting process.  Piecing, free motion, etc.

My in-laws were out garage sailing and found this beauty:

It's a "nostalgic" Singers 15 made in the 1970's (we believe).  It still has the anti-rust coating on all the parts and has never been used.  At the moment it is being used as a decoration piece.  Reviews on the machine indicate that some of these reproduction machines have issues with stitch quality and noise.  Since we have no shortage of vintage machines to play with, we'll keep this one as is for now.

Speaking of sewing machines...A dear friend of ours who is on very limited income, took her machine (Singers 132 Featherweight) to a local repair shop.  She was told that the machine could not be fixed, wasn't worth spending the money on, and that she should just leave it at the shop for them to dispose of.  Since she walks or buses everywhere she left the machine.

Fortunately a friend of hers smelled something fishy, went with our friend to the shop and demanded the return of the machine.  My husband then picked the machine up so she wouldn't have to carry it and brought it home to look at.

The first thing we found was that there was no bobbin tension.  I'm the tension person in this family (I mean sewing tension, not personal!).  I could not tighten the tension.  DH took the bobbin case apart and it was full of lint.  That fixed, he then took all covers off the machine and used an air compressor to blow it out.  The repair guys probably never even opened up the machine.  There would be no way they could have missed seeing that
A:  the machine was in need of cleaning and oiling
B:  there was nothing wrong with the gears (which they claimed was the issue)

The belt is frayed a bit.  The bobbin case rattles because of some wear.  But this machine is now ready to stitch!

Our local quilt shop (Sew Divine) is collecting quilts in for those who lost everything in the huge Fort McMurray forest fire.  So you know where my last batch of charity quilts went!  Now to get busy finishing some more.

I currently have about 15 tops to quilt.  So the quilting goals for July...try to get some tops quilted!  I'm going to try for at least an hour of quilting on my Bailey each week day.  It will be interesting to see if I can discipline myself to do it.

I have some obstacles to overcome.  My colour vision, in fact my vision period, has suffered from all the laser procedures and eye injections I've had over the past few months.  So using blending thread is a no go.  I just cant see where I'm quilting.  Even with the magnifying glass I've attached to the Bailey.  So any error in the quilting is going to stick out like a sore thumb.  I'll have to make sure the quilt recipients have poor vision as well.  Then it will be all good.

And finally....Anna wrote an article about me in the July issue of The Quilt Pattern Magazine!  Sorry folks.  If you want to know what she says you'll have to subscribe!  (Or come over for a cup of coffee and a quilting session and I'll let you read my copy.)