Iron the squares! what the heck!!! now where did I put that darn iron? Day 3 of working on the quilt. And by the way, the rotary cutter is amazing.

My time to work on my crafts is limited so I have to grab an hour here and an hour there when I can. So today I wanted to cut out the other set of squares using the rotary cutter we picked up on our shopping excursion on Wednesday.

The cutter is amazing.  It cuts so nice and straight and doesn't seem to leave the fabric with any frayed edges.  Wish I had had it from the start but not going back and starting again, that's for sure.

So now I had another six brown squares to utilise so I thought I would re-design my patterning.  I drew up another grid and I played around with ideas using the squares.

This was my first try.

I decided to still use some of the little flowers on white squares as I could keep them away from the red hearts on white now I was using less of them and had added another set of different squares.  I wasn't too sure of the design though, I think I needed to spread the colours out a bit more, so I came up with this instead.

I realised I could have played around with more ideas and come up with different designs all day but I decided to go with this.

Now came the question of which sewing machine to use.  My Singer sews pretty nice and straight but the 'Brother inherited from mum in law' has a bigger sewing base.  I tried them both and decided on the Brother.  I swear my mum in law has put the mockers on it though as when I first tried it, it wouldn't sew properly.  Somehow I had mis-threaded it but I found the error and it corrected it and it was fine.  It has a guide attachment which I am using.  (I have been using sewing machines for 60 years so to not thread it properly was a bit weird, hence the mum in law 'mockers' theory).

I couldn't set it correctly to sew just 1/4" though because of the feeder teeth so my seams will be just over 1/4". I figure that if they are all the same it won't matter.  I will increase the border to compensate so the overall quilt size will be the same.  I am not cutting the border out until I have the main body all sewn up and know the exact size I need.

So somewhere I read that I had to iron my squares.  Now, I gave up ironing years ago!  Yes, I do have one and I even have an ironing board.  I knew where the board was but I had to hunt down the iron.  Stashed away in a cupboard so as to not gather dust!

So I dutifully ironed all my squares being careful to keep them in their rows and corrrect positions.

Then I bagged them up in rows in ziploc bags, marked them and put them away until next week sometime.

I bought down the centre square to work on over the weekend as I will hand sew the red and blue piece onto the white backing.  I can do that while watching TV in the evenings.

Now it's time to stop and make dinner, so that's it for today.  Have a great weekend and hope you enjoy the Superbowl on Sunday.

Quilting is easy.......not!

So I made a couple of mistakes today.  The first was to mis-cut two of the blue squares with flowers which meant I had to change my pattern.  I didn't have enough blue fabric to cut another two squares. So now I only had six of those and I had planned for eight. So, I cut an extra two of on of the other fabrics I am using.

I laid out all the squares in the redesigned pattern but two of the fabrics didn't contrast enough and there was no way not to put them together.

So back to the workshop to dig through my other tote of fabric which I thought was mainly dressmaking fabric.  But, surprise!  There was a lot of quilting fabric in there so I found a fabric that would do to replace one of the two similar patterns.  Obviously way back when when I thought I had sorted out the fabric I hadn't done a very good job.

Will be out all day tomorrow so it will have to be Thursday before I get back to it.

Cutting squares of equal size is not that easy!  I need to get a rotary cutter my Facebook friends tell me so I will pick one up tomorrow.

I started on the quilt after having a marathon furniture moving around frenzy.

We have been busy moving furniture around and giving some away.  It all started with bringing down the rocker chair from my room to fix.

I posted about getting my room sorted out on Saturday and was eager to get up there to work but we had the chair to fix first.

Sunday, we fixed that chair for my husband to use in the front room.  That meant something had to go.  I emailed our neighbour to see if they, or their son and his family who live nearby, could use a sofa.  We had two in the living room and it really was too much.  I liked the blue sofa because the two outsides seats reclined. The other one is a green leather one which my husband didn't want to part with.

But one of them needed to go.  My husband wasn't using either, he always sits in his wheelchair which isn't very comfy after a while. He had difficulty making the recliner work and the green sofa is too low for either of us now.  (This is where I insert "It sucks to get old").

We had a matching blue recliner upstairs so if we let the blue sofa go I would still have a recliner and he would have the repaired chair.  That seemed to be the solution.

Our neighbours took the blue sofa and it was perfect for them.  They carried the blue recliner downstairs for us too.  So we had the recliner and the repaired rocker in the living room.

BUT!!! the rocker was too low and it broke again.

BUT!!! we had another solution.  We have two black leather rockers, I personally don't like them, they are too hard and I really don't like leather furniture that much to sit on.  One had been banished to his office and the other to our sunroom.  The office is next door to the living room so that was the easiest to swap over.

We struggled with that on our own, couldn't pester the neighbours again.  So you know what it's like when you start moving furniture around, there is the dreaded dust underneath everything so a mammoth cleaning session ensued.

Now we had the recliner and the rocker in the living room.  We have two identical wolf throws so I put them on them and they really looked nice. My husband could now sit in the rocker which wasn't too low.  We have a footstool for him too.

Well, that wasn't meant to be either as that leather rocker had a broken spring and a bump in the seat.

So, yesterday, Monday,  we swapped it out with the one in the sunroom and of course, I had another cleaning session in there.

In the good old days, we would have taken this all in our stride  but now it takes us a long time to do anything and we get worn out.

But, finally, yesterday afternoon, I got into my knitting/sewing room to start on the quilt.  We do not know if our new grand baby is a boy or girl so going with bright neutral colours.

It takes 36 squares of 5.5".  Easy, I think, 6 fabrics of six squares each.  Should be able to make something symmetric with those.  I like things to be organised so symmetry works for me. But I only found five fabrics I wanted to use, however, I also found a 12" x 12" half finished square (equivalent of 4 squares) that my Mum in law had started on that had the colours in I was using. So now that meant I only needed 32 squares.  32 divided by 5 doesn't go.

My fabrics are:-
Big flowers on blue
Red with little pattern
Little flowers on white
Hearts on white
Yellow gingham

I have plain red and blue fabric for the borders.

I cut six squares of small flowers.  I wanted six squares of red but only had enough for 4. So if I used two lots of 8 and one lot of 6 I would have 32.

I drew out a grid of 36 and made a design using the above number of squares and patterns.

I hope it works.

The chosen fabrics.  The table in my room is great.  Love it!!

The pattern I came up with for the squares.

Here is the room with the table set up.

I spent some time in my room yesterday tidying it up and re-arranging a bit.  It was my son's room before he grew up and moved out and is now our spare room.  Gradually over the past few years I have been converting it into my knitting/sewing room.  First the sewing table went in there from the office.  Then a desk went in there from the office for my knitting machine.  Then a bench came up out of the workshop so that I could set up another machine on the back of the desk and sit there and use it. Then the totes started filling up with yarn and fabric.  When they were all full then a brand new wheelie garbage bin found it's way in there to be filled up with more yarn. Parts were acquired for my knitting machine so they needed a home too.

See previous posts for the saga of the old 32 bit computer so I could use the Knitware program so it is now entrenched in there too.

What the room was lacking was a work surface to lay out fabric and that's when I had the brainwave of the folding table.

I am very happy with my room now.  I have two sewing machines set up to use.  Only one knitting machine is set up right now, the SK700 with ribber but I could have two.  I had the SK155 set up on the back of the desk for a while but took it down when I was experimenting with the colour changer on the SK700 as I needed to have 4 cones of wool out at once and they took up a lot of space on the desk.

My cranky old computer and huge monitor are out and I have a dinosaur of a TV set up too.  My wish list now includes a flat screen monitor and a flat screen TV for the room but for now I am happy with the set up.

And I have my table top!  And I will keep it clear so I can work on it. I will, I will.  Such good intentions!

I know our stuff is very dated but it is also very functional and I am very happy with my room now.

Life is wonderful.

The table sits perfectly over the bottom of the bed.  The SK155 is sitting on the bench behind the desk.  I finally got around to patching up the damaged top cover.  It doesn't bear weight when it's lifted so I glued the cracks together with superglue and put beige coloured duck tape over them for double measure.  At least the cover is functional now and keeps the dust and sunlight off the SK155.

The yarn, fabric and notions
stash and spare sponge bars

The 8mm Knitsmart all fits into the tool box, the LC2 lace carriage sits atop it and the YC5 colour changer above that. And please don't look too closely, there is dust!  I hate dusting, it is such a thankless task.  I do it though but this room gets a bit neglected sometimes.  Now I've published to the world though,
better get up there and make it right.

The very old computer screen that takes up a quarter of the desk top
and you can just see part of the dinosaur TV on the left.

Now to get back to work...............no excuses now!

Karma or what?

My husband has a chronic autoimmune disease.  He has been having chemo treatment for 13 months now in a bid to slow it down.  All was well until about two months ago, he had been feeling a lot better but it seems the chemo has done all it can for now.  He is not feeling that great.

He is a fighter though so in a bid to get some motivation and do something within his current capabilities we dragged out a rocker chair from my knitting/sewing room that needs fixing.  We needed different screws to what we have so we went to town to pick some up.

Right by the screws section were some folding tables one of which was assembled so I could measure the distance between the legs.  Yeah, it would fit over the standard size bed in my knitting/sewing room. (see my previous post for the brainwave I had about this).  Was this karma or what?

Trouble was it was quite pricey for our budget.  We had to go to Walmart to pick up some groceries so I thought would check see if they had any folding tables.  They did!  And they were $21 cheaper so I bought one and today I am going to go and set it up and re-organise my knitting/sewing room. The chair won't go back in there, it was only there as it needed fixing so I will have some extra space for my totes of yarn and fabric.  When we fix the chair it will go back in the living room.

Pictures will be taken.  I am excited!

Look at the treasures I found!

I bought the tote containing my Mum in law's quilting stuff over from the workshop and set about going through it all.  I had looked in it briefly before but had never dug down to the bottom. I found several plastic cutting rulers of different shapes, several quilting books and magazines and lots of fabric.  Some of it is cut into different shapes.  There are squares of differing sizes and patterns, likewise triangles and rectangles.

The absolute treasure though was 36 of 12" x 12" squares all sewn up ready.  These were at the bottom of the tote and I had missed them before. What a treasure find!

This is just a fraction of the 12" squares.  No two are the same.

The problem is I am not sure what her game plan was as there aren't any two the same.  They are beautiful though, made up of all shapes and patterns.  Some are even hand sewn.

I am thinking about how to utilize them.  They are too precious just to lie unused for any more time. Goodness knows how many years old they are.  They have been in our workshop for 10 years.  She had been ill for many years prior to that so she must have made them when she was in her sixties or before so they are at least 40 years old.

What was her thinking?  I have no idea.  She was a very precise woman.  I imagine that any quilt she would have made would have been very uniform and symetric in design so not sure what she had in mind when she made these.

I think I am going to just join them all into a random patchwork quilt.  We need a new quilt for our queen size bed we use in the spring and summer downstairs in the sunroom.

To my reckoning I have 36 sq feet when made up which is 6' x 6'.  That isn't big enough so I will have to add some squares.  Mine will pale in comparison to hers.  I will not attempt to make them like she did, she had many, many years of practice on me in the quilt making field.  I will probably use some of the squares and rectangles and sew them together to make 12" x 12" squares.  I will add a border too.

But that is down the road a bit.  First I want to make the baby quilt I talked of in my previous post.

I looked at different tutorials online but found this to be the best suited for my immediate needs:-

Fiskars tutorial to make a baby quilt for beginners

I have everything I need I think except the fabric cutter.  I am really surprised I didn't find one in my Mum in law's things as she always had  the best of everything.  I did look for them in our local Walmart store and they sell the Fiskar's ones so I will purchase one soon.  Don't really need it right now as I have so many shapes already cut out in my treasure haul.

Finding all this stuff has made me want to re-do my sewing/knitting room.  It is really our spare bedroom so still has a bed in it.  I want to take it out and put in a big work table for projects.  Trouble is, it is our spare bedroom and may need to use it at some point so I am still pondering on that.  I use the bed now anyway to lay out projects but a table would be sooooo much better.  I thought about a sleeper bed but not really the answer due to space restrictions.  Taking the bed out and putting in a sofa wouldn't leave enough room for a nice work table.  There is a solution I know, just have to keep pondering.

Oh just had a brainwave of sorts. Blogging does so help me think things through.  Maybe I could get a folding table and place it over the bottom of the bed.  Have to go measure now and research folding tables.  That might just work. (Clapping hands in glee)

Thinking about making a baby quilt.

I have attained the age of 66 and never ever made a quilt.  Some will throw their hands up in sheer horror and be mortified and others will say "Me neither".  It matters not, I am past the point of worrying over such things.

So I have a mind to make a baby quilt.  I have looked at many articles about quilt making.  I don't want to be an expert, I just want to make a plain old patchwork quilt.  I don't have the time or the patience to make some of the absolutely fabulous quilts I have seen articles about.  Maybe if I had started in my twenties I would be at that point now, but I didn't.

So a simple patchwork quilt it will be.

I have the fabric, I even have some squares that my Mum in law had cut out at some point in her life and some fancy shaped pieces she had cut out.  I will look at them and see if I will use them.  They are stored out in the workshop.

So methinks that is going to be my next project.

My husband is researching making shoes and boots from leather so we will be working on that too.

So maybe we are over our funk!

I think a new sewing machine is out of the question, we worked on a list of things that we need and need to do yesterday and I realise a new sewing machine is not a priority.  Especially as I already have three.  (can't help smiling here).

Sometimes I am worse than a kid when I want something.  I obsess! But I think I have got over it now...................................maybe!

Trying to get out of the funk!

I decided as it is way too cold to go outside that I would try yet again to install Knitware on my Windows 64bit computer that runs Windows 7.  Well, same old, same old.  It will not install even following the instructions implicitly.  I do have it on the old Dell 32 bit I bought last year but I would really like it on my main computer which is much more accessible

So, I thought I would look at knitting blogs to try and get some inspiration.

Found this entry on a blog:-

http://machineknittingismylife.blogspot.com/2014/11/sweatermaker-easy-charting-

It is a software program called Sweater Maker that purports to run on all systems.

Has anyone tried it?

Not really happy about having to pay for a program I can't test but if other folks have tried and liked it I would splash out.

In a bit of a funk!

I am going through a post Christmas funk.  This is weird because right now I have a lot of time I could be spending knitting or sewing and I am doing, nothing, nought, nada!  It is very cold right now but the sun is shining so can't blame the lack of sunshine.  It is too cold to work in the workshop so leather work is out right now but even if it wasn't I don't feel like doing that either.

I think it is because I really don't have anything that desperately needs making.  Before Christmas I always have a load of things to make so I must burn out.  Also I have a sore foot.  Stubbed my toe a couple of weeks ago and split it quite badly and it wouldn't heal and got infected.  Finally cracked up yesterday and went to the doctors who cut away some of the dead skin and put me on antibiotics. Still sore today so keeping off it more.

Hoping for some inspiration soon.  We do have a new grand baby to look forward to in May so I could start on something I guess.

Maybe tomorrow..............and if not I will blame the sore toe!

Selfie's are definitely for the young and not for me anymore.

I decided not to make my green hat into just a Christmas hat so I made a pompom using the green of the hat and the colors of the hats I made for my family.  Now I can wear it all winter.