Who knew there were so many 'walking feet'?

So I spent the entire afternoon yesterday researching and looking at 'walking feet' and how to do the quilting.  Who knew there were so many different kinds for so many different sewing machines?

I couldn't find one to fit the Brother XL703, the 50+ year old machine so I searched for one for my Singer 9805.

I found which one I needed for my model then searched for where to buy one. Found a couple of different sellers on ebay had them so this morning I ordered one.

Before making the decision to buy it I wanted to see if there was an alternate way to do quilting. Apparently, if you are super good, you can quilt using an open toe darning foot.  I actually have a closed toe darning foot for the XL703 (which seemingly could work also) but the bottom teeth won't drop on the machine. They should, but they don't.  The knob on the front that is supposed to take them down so you can darn doesn't work.  I have tried to get it to function but I can't and it isn't worth the time, effort and cost to take it to get repaired.  Buying a new machine would be more cost effective (but I've yet to convince my husband of that. grrr)!

So, a walking foot for the Singer was really the only sensible option as all the quilting sites say, that using this foot, is the best way for beginners to go.  I could have bought an open toe foot for the Singer which was cheaper than the walking foot but from what I read only experienced quilters can make it work.  I can darn on the Singer it seems because it has a cover that go over the teeth so you can move the fabric around.  As I have never tried to darn on it trying to quilt would be be a little above my pay grade.

This is the walking foot that fits my Singer 9805 that I have ordered

I am not planning on taking up quilting full time or becoming an expert quilter.  I will make the queen sized quilt I talked of in a previous post using the ready quilted squares I have and after that just baby quilts if any more new babies come along.

I have knitting projects I want to do, a baby jacket to make for the grand baby due in May and a sweater for myself.  To date, the only thing I have knitted myself is a hat since I re-embarked on the knitting machine train mid 2011.

The interesting thing of the day is that my husband knew I would need this foot to do the quilting.  I guess he used to pay attention when his Mum used to sew.  He knew it went up and down.  I didn't!

So that leads me to wonder where the heck is the one she had??????  I have searched and searched and not been able to find it!

And the faux pas for day 6 working on the quilt was............

I managed to grab an hour or so yesterday to work on the quilt.  It was time to sew all the strips together but first I had to insert the centre large square.  It needed to be cut to size and I calculated what size it needed to be so that the surrounding squares would all line up.

I got the correct size but I didn't cut it out correctly so the motive was not in the centre of the square. AARRGGHH!!!!!

This is where panic set in.  How can I fix it?  Well I couldn't fix the square so I had to replace it.  I really like the centre piece because it ties in the border colours I have chosen (plain red and plain blue) so I wanted to incorporate it somehow. The solution, it turned out, isn't that difficult.  I cut a plain white square and I will unpick the motif from the square I cut incorrectly and sew it onto the new white square.

I sewed all the strips together and ironed it and I am happy with how it turned out. Almost all the seam joins line up.  My ironing all the seams the same way didn't quite work out I discovered when I sewed it all together.  Also, a couple of the seams have a twist but overall I am happy, it looks great on the right side.

Next I have to cut out the borders.

Also, I have been researching the actual quilt sewing process once the three layers are in place and ready to be quilted.

I do not have a 'walking foot' for any of my machines.  I couldn't find one specifically for the Brother old machine I am using so I will check if there is one available for the Singer.  I was surprised I didn't find one in my MIL's stuff but I didn't so I have to keep on researching until I can find one I can buy that will work on one of my machines.

Not sure if I'll get any time today on it but it's still afternoon so I might be able to grab an hour somewhere.  Have to find a 'walking foot' first or a way to sew it without one.

Days 4 and 5 of working on the baby quilt

Saturday I sat and hand sewed the centre large square.  The quilted piece had been pinned to the white backing when I found it so all I had to do was to sew it in place.  Little tiny stitches were required.

I started on it and thought that it would be much easier to sew if it were in an embroidery ring.

Yep, back to the workshop I went because I know I had seen some of those in my Mum in law's stuff.

I found them along with a lot of embroidery stencils.  I also found some quilting stencils for when you stitch the three layers together.  I need to google how to use them sometime.  For this quilt I am doing straight lines as stated in the Fiskar intructions I am following.

Quilt making for beginners

I also found a 24" x 6" quilting grid ruler which will be a big help cutting out the border and many packs of cardboard shapes cut out with instructions.  They are different designs for quilt squares using various shapes.  They must be what my MIL used to make all those different quilt square treasures I found which I posted about.

Sunday was a total chill day for me.  Don't get many of those so it was nice.  First of all I worked on this blog, updating the pages which are photos only. Then I watched the hype of the Superbowl and then I watched the game.  I really enjoyed it all.  I did get off my butt to make meals and such so I wasn't totally lazy.

Yesterday, I had to move some stuff around.  I had been keeping all my quilting stuff in one tote but with the new found items I needed another container.  So now all my fabric is in one tote and all the books, magazines, stencils, patterns etc. are in another.

Then I sat down and sewed.  I finally plucked up the courage to start sewing things together.  I sewed together the squares into strips.  Leastwise, I did the bottom two rows and the top two and the two half rows that go either side of the centre square.

I used a fabric guide on my sewing which helped a lot.  I also realised how much better it was to sew using the squares that I had cut out using the rotary cutter.  So nice and straight and hardly any fraying.  (The next quilt will be easier because of the cutter......woah! did I just say 'next one'?  Only the other day I was saying 'never again'.  I do have all those beautiful quilt squares my MIL made so I suppose there will be at least one more.  Of course, if any more babies come along, I might have to make another.  Then who knows, I might be hooked........)

The next tricky bit will be getting the centre square sized correctly.  Then, when that is done, sewing it all together and getting the squares lined up.

Will have today to think about it as we are going out shopping today before the possible snow tomorrow.

Some things I missed blogging about before or didn't post pictures of.....cos I thought I didn't take any....duh!

Here are some pictures of things I did blog about and thought I didn't have pictures of and some things I made that I didn't blog about in the first place.

Have spent the morning updating the 'photo only' pages on the blog and found these I had missed one way or the other.

Key fob for a very dear friend

Christmas bags for grandkids who live a long way away so when we order online and have them sent direct they have something to put them in

Belt for my stepson, blogged about it but forgot I had taken these photos.

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.

The grand daughter's sewing machine

We did not do the best job of planning for our old age so we live on a modest income.  Not a complaint, just an observation.  So when Christmas comes around we operate on a budget.  I allocate a specific amount for each child and grandchild and like to make that allocation go as far as possible.  I had talked in a previous blog about buying a sewing machine suitable for our 7 year old grand daughter.

I found a factory reconditioned Singer Pixie for $14.99.  I couldn't believe my luck.  There was enough money left in the allocation to buy sewing scissors, spools of thread, a tape measure and stitch ripper.  I had some fabric so I made a bag for her to keep the notions in and also included some fabric I had.

Hence, her gift seemed much more than the other grandchildren's but moneywise, they were all the same.

Just got some pictures in my email of my grandkids in California taken today.  My grand daughter is still wearing the jacket I knitted for her late 2011.  Wow!  A worthwhile project for sure.

Some Christmas projects

Here are some of the things I made for Christmas gifts this year that I talked about in previous posts:-

My daughter and grand kids in England wearing their hats.  It gets quite chilly in winter in England.

Xmas progress

We (my husband does the leather staining) made the grandson's belt.  It turned out great but in my haste to wrap it and mail it I forgot to take pictures. Duh!

I finished the hats and neck warmers.  Just have to sew them up.  I will try very hard top remember to take pictures of them.

I also made a bag from fabric today to put some practice fabric and sewing notions in for our grand daughter for Christmas to go with the Singer Pixma.  I used the Brother XL 703.  It sewed beautifully.

I did overlocking on the seams and turned the top with a row of scallop stitch.  It was a simple job but it was so nice to have the different stitches.  Guess what? yep, forgot to take pictures again.  Double duh!!

Coasters are done and conditioned etc and need to be wrapped but I have already taken pictures of those.

So I think that's all the making I will be doing for Christmas.  Not bad to be done by the 12th, I am usually still going in a mad panic at this time so I am happy I have been a little better organized this year.

A quick update on the Brother XL 703 and gift making

I have finished the second set of leather coasters.  I am very happy with both sets.  (Pictures after Christmas).  We still have a leather belt to make for a grandson.  That will be this week's project out in the workshop.

At the weekend I started on the hats and neck warmers for our hunting friends.  I made a very nice hunter green hat on Saturday.  My husband said it wouldn't be any good for the hunters though as by this time of year the leaves have all turned brown and that's when they hunt.  Luckily, I have some lighter brown and tan yarn so I made a hat and a neck warmer yesterday and will make the same again today.  Then I will be finished making knitted gifts. Decided to forego on the mittens as I am running out of time. (Again, pictures after Christmas.  Don't know who reads my blog so don't need them getting a sneak preview).
I do now however have a nice hunter green hat.  That will be the first thing I have knitted for myself.  I will make a green and red pom pom for it and it will be my Christmas hat.

Now, back to the Brother XL 703 sewing machine.  It has been needling me that it isn't working.   I now have the manual so really wanted to get it to work.  No matter what I was doing to it though, it kept snapping the cotton and the fabric was moving to the right and getting scrunched up.  Was the feeder thing broken maybe and that was the cause?

Yesterday, after finishing knitting, I took another look.  I un-threaded the machine and ran the fabric through it and the fabric went nice and straight so it wasn't the feeder.

After a lot of testing I isolated the cause.  It was the lever that goes up and down that the cotton goes through before it goes down to the needle.  It had been pushed against the frame and was catching the thread and not allowing it to be pulled through and was snapping the cotton where it was threaded through the needle.  I pushed the lever away from the frame and amazingly it stayed there and is now sewing well.

I didn't get chance to try everything in the manual but I did try a few of the stitches and they worked just fine.  I am so happy happy happy.  After I am done with Christmas preps I will sit down and go through the manual and try all the different processes.  That will probably be a New Year project as I still have a ton of things to do for Christmas.

The blue stitching was done
on the brother XL 703

Been quite busy with Christmas gift projects

Since my last post on November 22nd I have been busy with Christmas gift projects.  I have knitted 5 ribbed stocking caps, three of them being for females have pompoms.  They have all turned out really nice.  I made them the same colours as the scarves I knitted for them before.

I have completed the set of leather coasters I had started on and am well on the way to finishing a second set.

I managed to get a Singer Pixie sewing machine for our youngest grand daughter.  It was a heck of a bargain.  A factory reconditioned one for $15!  I was so happy to find it.  Other used ones were going for $40.  This meant that I could purchase some additional spools of cotton, some beginner sewing scissors and tape measure etc. and still be withing budget.

So up to here all was good.  Then it went downhill:-

I have been obsessing about my sewing machines.  I couldn't stop thinking about the Pacesetter XL 703, which I have now discovered is 51 years old.  It is capable of doing all the fancy stitches I will ever need.  I spent days on and off looking for a manual for it online.  Eventually found one in the Brothermall online store.  $5 plus shipping.  I ordered it Monday and it arrived yesterday.  I read it from front to back then this morning went up and got the machine out again.  This time I took the covers off and oiled it.  I bought new needles, some for embroidery and some for stretch fabrics.  It says the reason for the top thread breaking could be wrongly threaded, blunt needle, too small needle for cotton, tension too tight, needle in wrong way, etc. etc.

I had the machine all oiled.  I changed the thread, adjusted the tension, put in one of the new needles (the correct way), threaded it as per the instructions (which is how I was threading it anyway) and it still snaps the top thread.

I am at a bit of a loss now but will keep on working on it.  The inside was immaculate so hopefully I can get it to work.

So after messing with that and having no success I decided to do some knitting.  I am making caps, neck warmers and mittens for our neighbours.  The same as I made for my husband. (see earlier blog). As they both hunt I thought I would make them striped in woodland colours.  Black, brown, green and tan.

Out came the colour changer.  I got it all set up with the 4 strand mast and refreshed my memory of how to use it from the manual.  Then set off to knit. The colour changer worked great but I couldn't get the correct tension on the mast and the yarn wasn't running freely enough.  I had it set on the lowest tension too.

The knitting had holes in it where the yarn was tightening up.  So it came off the needles.

By this time I was feeling a bit defeated.  I was not having a good machine day.

I came down, made and ate lunch and decided to blog about my grotty day.  I will go and sit next and do the stitching on my coasters.  No machine involved in that!

As I don't have the time to mess with the yarn changer I will knit the sets in plain colour.  One set in brown and the other in green.  They are father and son so they need to be different so they know whose is who.

So off to do my leather stitching, (no machine involved lol) and hoping for a better day tomorrow.

My sewing machines

Sewing and knitting have always been my main hobbies throughout my life. There have been periods when I would go many months between using a sewing machine but as far as I can remember I have always owned one.  I have made lots of clothes, curtains, pillow cases, done repairs and even tried sewing leather. The latter was not a success!

Likewise with my knitting, sometimes I have gone years without using a machine. I haven't always had a knitting machine, circumstances and moving countries twice have dictated that.

Now, however I am lucky to have three knitting machines and three sewing machines. (technically four sewing machines but one has been relegated to storage as it is pretty old and outdated.)

Actually, my three usable ones are old compared to today's standards too.  The newest one is 18 years old lol.

Here are pictures of the three I have in the house.  I go through phases of using them.  At the moment I am into the Singer.

My Singer, the newest machine and it is 18 years old!

I haven't really used this one much.  I bought it with me from Canada.  It was a Christmas gift in 1996.  I worked full time back and was involved in various different things like theatre and my son's sports so didn't have much time for sewing.  When I came to the US I had the use of my mother in law's machine.  It was a bit fancier albeit older than mine and has a bigger range of stitches.  I used it but mainly for plain sewing.  I never really got into the fancy stitches.

My mum in law's machine.  A Brother Pacesetter XL 703.  Guess technically it's mine now as she passed away four years ago.

I used this one for some time but it started to break the thread so I set it aside and got my Singer back out.  Then wham! it stopped working.  We took it to a repair guy and he said it was the foot pedal that had quit and he had an old one hanging around so it was working again but it had lost it's speed.  Obviously the foot pedal wasn't fully compatible with the motor but at least it was working.

Not long after we were at an auction and a Brother came up for sale.  It is pretty basic so we took a chance and bought it for $15.  It's a great little workhorse and very fast so great for sewing curtains and anything with a lot of plain sewing.

The auction $15 Brother special

So I had been using this one forever but decided a couple of weeks ago to get my other machines out to check they were OK.

I had been checking out machines in the store.  I can't help myself.  I have a thing about sewing and knitting machines. Today's machines have so many more functions than any of mine.  I have to be realistic though as to how often I would use said functions!  Hence the reason for getting my other machines out.  Maybe I could still get fancy stitches without    buying a new machine.

My mum in law's machine, the Pacesetter, still snapped the thread so it got cleaned up and put back.  It does do some nifty stitches though and it got me wanting even more to do more than just plain sewing and ordinary ziz zag.

So then out came the Singer.  After messing with the Pacesetter I had a better idea as how to make different stitches by varying the stitch length and width.  I also found out that after the initial slow start it speeds up so it my preferred machine right now.

Here is some of my 'playing' on the Singer.  It also does great button holes and can apparently sew buttons on too but I haven't tried that yet.

Just prior to all the machine experiments I made a Christmas bag for our newest grandson.  Think I made it on the Brother auction special but not sure. I hand stitched his initial onto it.  In hindsight I wish I had waited and used the Singer to fancy stitch it on but such is life.   

Will I be able to resist buying another sewing machine?  Who knows, they are pretty cheap so after Christmas and property taxes who knows what the new year will bring?

I am also looking to buy a sewing machine for our youngest grand daughter. That has been a challenge.  She is only 7 so I think that she just needs a basic machine. After a lot of looking I think I have found a Singer she would like. It's a Singer Pixie.  It's main redeeming feature is that it is purple, her favourite colour. It is a craft machine so is smaller than a regular machine.  Perfect for smaller hands.  Only problem is the reviews are mixed, some people love it and say it works great and some hate it and say it doesn't work well at all.   I don't want to put her off sewing for good by giving her a machine that doesn't work too well but on the other hand we have a budget for Christmas gifts and this falls within it.  Still have a little time to think about it.  The good reviews outweigh the bad.

What I've been up to the past three weeks.

Well, I made the belt for my son's birthday but in my haste to mail it off to him in England I forgot to take photos! (a recurring theme I'm sorry to say).  I have asked him to take a couple and email them to me. Time will tell on that one lol, he is a busy young man.

My husband wanted a hat and neck warmer for when he is outside so I made him these on the Studio 700 using the ribber.  Straight forward

1 x 1 rib.  He can pull the neck warmer up to just under his eyes so his face keeps nice and warm when he is outside.

So after making the above he wanted some mittens but with one finger for his index finger so he could work in them out in the shop.  Well, that one got me stumped as I didn't want to hand knit them and was clueless as to how to do them on the machine.  Then I had a brain wave!!!!!

I made a black tube on the machine in 1 x 1 rib and using the same yarn as for the hat and neck warmer.  I gathered the top and sewed it up and left two holes so he could wear black magic gloves underneath and poke his thumb and finger through the holes.  Voila! mittens with an index finger and thumb made very simply.  The magic gloves even have special tips so that he can use his cell phone and tablet wearing them.  Magic gloves are so cheap here, only $2 a pair for the ones with the special tips and two pairs of the normal ones for $1.50. Why on earth would I knit them when I can buy them that cheaply?  With the extra tube layer if it gets too cold he can just bring his thumb and finger inside the mitten.  We are having bitterly cold weather right now, well below freezing so the hat, gloves and neck warmer are getting well used.

I have also done some sewing but that is for another post, perhaps tomorrow........

Just in the nick of time!

Tuesday morning I spent doing the final sewing up and got finished by lunchtime.  My husband's birthday was yesterday (Wednesday).

He loves the cardigan.

Next project a belt for my son's 24th birthday in November.  I need to get on with that as it has to be mailed to the UK.

No rest for the wicked!

The countdown is on!

I have the the back, fronts and sleeves all done for my husband's cardigan.  His birthday is Wednesday.  I will tackle the neckband and front bands over the weekend and try and get it all sewn up.  Have to get the buttons for it on Monday along with a birthday card so fingers crossed all will be done in time.

As a birthday treat my stepson from NJ is flying in and taking him to the second game of the Basketball World Series in Kansas City. They lived many years in KC so it will be very emotional for them.  I declined to go as I really don't know a lot about baseball and I don't hail from KC. They can have the quality father and son time together and enjoy the game without having to explain it me on a ball by ball basis.  I will have a chill night and watch a chic flick.

Hopefully he will get to wear the cardigan as it will cool right down at night.

Well, flippin' heck!

It took me two sessions to complete a sleeve.  Getting set up always takes me a while as I put everything away after each session and cover my machines etc. etc.  So I knitted one sleeve up to the shaping in one session and finished it off in the second.  I was really happy how it turned out.  I got the patterning correct so it was central, followed the instructions (which I write out so I can tick off as I go) and it all went fine.  Then when I got it off the machine I could see that I had forgotten to to put the right side punchcard lever to 'L' to make it elongated.  I really need to get a light somehow on the actual knitting.  I am using navy wool and the back of the desk is dark wood so you can barely see it as it is growing. I think I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I could have seen it.

Methinks one of those newfangled LED lights which attach magnetically is in order.  I can attach it behind the knitting and it will light it up......hopefully.  I have one somewhere in the workshop.  Off to find it before I start on the sleeves again.

Have to unwind the done one first though as I don't have enough yarn to finish without doing that.

Had a disastrous morning in the kitchen too so I think I will put off any knitting until tomorrow.