Free Motion Mavericks - Week 303 - Elephants

One pink elephant in the middle of a cradle quilt turned out to be just perfect for a little baby girl.  This is the quilt that I have sent to Ireland for my grand-daughter Emilia, who has now reached the grand old age of 11 days.

As you can imagine, I have been slightly distracted over the past few days.  Because we can't make firm plans to go and visit yet, I have been eagerly awaiting photos every day.  Already I can see her growing, getting a little fatter in the face, and looking at the world with wide open eyes.

As for sewing, I have finished the weighted blanket this evening, so I should be able to take some photos of it tomorrow.  Making 35 all white weighted pads was monotonous, and has left me yearning for a colourful project.  No doubt I shall think of something soon enough.

 

Here goes for Week 303:-

Many thanks to Gail for linking up with her elephant quilt.  If you haven't seen her blog post yet, nip over now and see more.

 

If you have no free motion quilting to show, feel free to link up and show any project you like.  Here are the usual rules, but feel free to ignore them.  To keep the original emphasis, however, preference will be given to free motion quilting when featuring projects from the previous week.

If you love free motion quilting, whether you are a beginner just taking the plunge, or you have reached the stage where you can do ostrich feathers with your eyes shut and still achieve perfect symmetry, then please link up.

Remember, FMQ is FMQ, whether your machine was made last week, or it is older than your granny.

Here are the very easy and slightly elastic rules:-

1.  Link up with any recent post, ideally from the last week but within the last month, which features a free motion quilting project, whether it is a work in progress or a finish.

2.  Link back to this post in your own post.

3.  Visit as many of the other participants as possible and say hello in the comments box.

4.  The link up will remain open for five days, from midnight to midnight GMT for the long weekend, Friday to Tuesday.

So far quilters from the USA, England, Wales, Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, France, Macau, Russia, Ireland, Brazil and Sweden have taken part.  The 

first participant from each new country will get a special mention the following week.

A Very Important Parcel

Guess who!

Yes, our first grandchild, Emilia Rose, was born on Sunday evening in Dublin to our son Ally and Leah.  So of course we are instantly besotted, cooing over every photo, and in fits of amusement at seeing a beautiful newborn baby girl who is the image of her dad at the same age.  Mum and baby are doing well, and arrived home from hospital yesterday.

So now you know why I have been knitting even more than usual this year!

I posted a parcel to them yesterday, which should arrive with them late this week or early next week.  Until it arrives, the contents remain secret, but I think there's an easy clue in the photo. 

A Picture for Sunday - Tyntesfield Through A Rainbow

For once I caught a rainbow before it faded.  This photo was taken on the 1st October, when I spotted a rainbow while I was in the kitchen.  I took a mad dash round the corner to the field nearest our house, took a few photos while the rainbow still had a wide arc, and then it shortened.  That was when I tried a zoom shot across the valley, and got this shot of Tyntesfield looking like Fairyland.

1914 Singer 99K

Once in a while I am asked to find a machine for someone who wants one.  A few weeks ago my friend Kate asked me to find a machine for her friend Claire, and put me in touch with her.  It was agreed that I should look out for a Singer 99K, so after drawing a blank at local charity shops, I looked at Ebay.  As always, there was plenty of overpriced rubbish.  Unfortunately, many sellers think old machines are valuable just because they are old.  That's not the way it works, as explained here by Helen Howes.

After going through the list on Ebay several times I decided to bid on this machine.  I could tell it was the same as my 1916 99K, so would be a very similar age.  The photos even showed the serial number, but the focus was slightly fuzzy, so I misread the first 5 as a 6.  The machines were not quite so close in age as I initially thought.

When I checked the number on the ISMACS website, I found out it was made in the second half of 1914.

It was interesting to see that at this early stage of the First World War, the machines were not yet marked as being manufactured in Great Britain.

Other differences I noticed between this machine and my 1916 99K were that it has a nice bit of decoration on the handcrank...

... and a more simply decorated but nonetheless beautiful faceplate.  After I had polished it it was so shiny it was difficult to photograph.  I had to turn the machine around to avoid too many reflections.

When I collected it, the machine was grimy and dusty and hadn't been used for years.  The seller, Graham, told me that it had belonged to his grandmother, and the family had had the machine for as long as he could remember.  The last person to use it was his father, some time in the 1970s, to put in a trouser zip.  Despite lying idle for such a long time, it turned well, and Graham was pleased to know that I was going to get it working again.

Once I got the machine home I started work on it.  I usually start by cleaning out all the dust underneath the slide plate and needle plate.  Cleaning up all the metal took a couple of days, during which time I also did the trickiest job, loosening the stitch length knob.  After that it was plain sailing.

The covering of the finger that pokes between the spokes of the wheel had worn down to bare metal.  My husband produced a piece of leather, which very conveniently already had holes in it, so I cut off a strip and tied it round the tip.

I needed to send off to Helen Howes for just two parts, a new tyre for the bobbin winder...

... and a catch for the base.

Once it was cleaned and oiled,  I threaded it up to test the stitch, and found it has two little quirks.

The tension spring, directly above the tension discs, lies flat against the machine, whereas ideally it should be about an eighth of an inch clear of the machine to allow for easy threading.  Despite this it threaded easily, just by holding the thread against the machine and sliding it under the wire.  I was glad I didn't have to try bending it outwards and risk snapping it.

The first hook that the thread passes through is slightly angled towards the right.  This means that the thread has a tendency to jump off the hook when winding the bobbin, but the problem is easily solved with one finger.

The compartment at the side of the machine was full of old odds and ends - rusty pins, blunt needles, a broken ruffler attachment, a couple of razor blades...  This is what is staying in

there for Claire - three original bobbins, a seam guide (the most useful attachment ever), three old needle packets, and spare needles wrapped in the old silver paper that the razor blades probably came in. 

                            

Finally, I had to clean the case.  The front was just a bit dusty.

However, when I wiped the back with a damp cloth the varnish came away because it had been reduced to powder.  It had probably been too near a sunny window for too long.

In fact, the varnish had remained like a shadow underneath the handle.  I gave it lashings of beeswax, which the wood readily absorbed, and which showed off the grain of the oak veneer better than on the front.

Now for my husband's contribution, the lid of the compartment.  On the left is the lid from my 1916 99K.  The corner is damaged, possibly by being dropped onto a hard floor.  In the middle is the lid from this machine, which had worse damage to the same corner.  I asked my husband to repair it, and he got as far as replacing a little piece of veneer, before he decided that it would be easier to make a new one.  He found a piece of oak in his shed, cut it to size, shaped it and stained it, and put on the knob and catch from the damaged lid.

It's a perfect fit.

Yesterday Kate visited to collect the machine to pass it on to Claire.  I put this machine and mine on the table side by side to see if she could work out which was which.  It was like comparing non-identical but very similar twins, but she could see that this machine was cleaner, and I could tell that it turned more smoothly because it was freshly oiled.

Most important of all, it sews beautifully!  Graham was happy to see it go to a good home, and Claire will have hours of pleasure getting to know her brand new 106 year old machine.

Free Motion Mavericks - Week 301 - Filling Pockets

The weighted blanket is nearly finished!  This week I put on the binding on.  A slapdash job if ever there was one.  With a quilt there is a nice clean edge to work with, whereas this brushed cotton was shifting about all over the place.  I also did some of my all time worst mitred corners.  This isn't one of them.

All the buttons are on, so the pockets can be fastened up.  Slowly and surely I am filling them.

Every pocket will contain a weighted pad.  I am using two layers of thin wadding with muslin on the outside, and putting plastic pellets inside the space between the two layers of wadding.  The pads are divided into 6 inch squares, and I am putting approximately 2 ounces of pellets into each square.  So far I have made twelve sandwiches, so that leaves me with twenty three to go.

Already the blanket seems to weigh a ton when it is folded up.  I stretched out on the settee to try it out.  Once the weight is spread out over you it is surprisingly relaxing.  I never realised it could be quite so pleasant lying under a load of flat bean bags.

 

Here goes for Week 301:-

Many thanks to Leanne for linking up last time with her Windows quilt.  If you haven't seen her blog post yet, nip over now and see more.

 

 

If you have no free motion quilting to show, feel free to link up and show any project you like.  Here are the usual rules, but feel free to ignore them.  To keep the original emphasis, however, preference will be given to free motion quilting when featuring projects from the previous week.

If you love free motion quilting, whether you are a beginner just taking the plunge, or you have reached the stage where you can do ostrich feathers with your eyes shut and still achieve perfect symmetry, then please link up.

Remember, FMQ is FMQ, whether your machine was made last week, or it is older than your granny.

Here are the very easy and slightly elastic rules:-

1.  Link up with any recent post, ideally from the last week but within the last month, which features a free motion quilting project, whether it is a work in progress or a finish.

2.  Link back to this post in your own post.

3.  Visit as many of the other participants as possible and say hello in the comments box.

4.  The link up will remain open for five days, from midnight to midnight GMT for the long weekend, Friday to Tuesday.

So far quilters from the USA, England, Wales, Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, New Zealand, France, Macau, Russia, Ireland, Brazil and Sweden have taken part.  The 

first participant from each new country will get a special mention the following week.

Seamless Cardigan

Nearly finished!  Last week I was knitting on three needles, and this week I was using four.  Once the sleeves were on the same needle with the fronts and back, I found using a circular needle well nigh impossible because there was a tight corner to turn at each sleeve.  The only way I could do it was with four needles.  Once I was far enough up towards the neckline, the whole thing flattened out and I could get back onto two needles.  Seeing the whole cardigan hanging from the needles in one piece is very entertaining.  There is so little left to do now, just the button band.

And no seams!  Just a little hole under each sleeve, five stitches across, to be sewn up.

Free Motion Mavericks - Week 300 - Let's Celebrate!

 

Everyone is invited to tea!  To celebrate Week 300 of Free Motion Mavericks Andrée and I are hosting linky parties on opposite sides of the Atlantic today, so you can dig in your archives and share your favourite posts - Free Motion Quilting with Andrée, and absolutely anything you like can be shared here.

Because this is a party, I shall start by putting out the cake.

Here we have cherry and almond polenta cake, fresh from the oven.  It's light and delicious, gluten free, and very easy to make.  Try out the recipe and let me know how it turns out!

Now it's time to hop over to Youtube to see one of my sewing machines.  I started the Youtube channel in 2011 when it dawned on me that many people who had never used vintage machines were interested in trying them out, but needed a bit of help to get started.  The most viewed videos are the ones that give instructions on how to thread the machines.  However, there is one video that just celebrates the sheer beauty of a particularly gorgeous machine, my Vesta Transverse Shuttle.

To make the video a bit more special I persuaded my son Ally to record a theme tune for it.  he did a great job!  He recorded the sound of my 1927 Singer 99K for the underlying rhythm and built up the rest of the sound track around it.  Listen to the beginning of the video and see if you can pick out the sound of the Singer!

Talking about singers, here is my great friend from summer last year.

My little friend Bob the robin kept me company on busy afternoons at the allotment.  He posed very nicely for me with a full beak, holding a tasty little earwig so that the light shone through its pincers, and on one occasion took an enormous cockchafer grub from my hand.

So there you have three favourite posts from me.  I'm looking forward to seeing yours!  Enjoy the party, a big thank you to everyone who has linked up with Free Motion Mavericks at any time, from Week 1 to Week 300, and also a big hug to my wonderful co host, Andrée over in Canada!

Linking up to Sarah's blog Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Whoop Whoop Friday