Garden Gate Plaids quilt

I finished the quilt tonight. I made this quilt for an adolescent boy, I think it looks like a quilt a boy would like?

 I hope you'll take a look at the page I posted for Sleep in Heavenly Peace.  They are a great organization!

Sleep in Heavenly Peace

I've been sewing a quilt top for the Sleep in Heavenly Peace ministry.  They make beds for children in need.  Take a look at their ministry, it's a nationwide organization.








This quilt is a free pattern at Andover Fabrics.  It's called Garden Gate Plaids.  This picture shows what I've finished so far!

My grandson was born!

My first grandchild was born on Dec. 6th and we can't be happier!  My daughter had a rough delivery but he eventually made it here.

Update: Dec. 15th.  My daughter had a complication from birth and we ended up in the hospital for 5 days, me being the one to take care of the baby so she could keep nursing.  She had a blood clot in her pelvic vein that turned septic.  And then on the way out of the hospital they diagnosed her with Mono!  She has really had a rough time of it.

Under my needle today

It's a beautiful fall day in North Carolina today, a perfect day for quilting.  This is the 5th of 6 quilts a customer gave me to finish for her.  I'm sewing the binding onto each one as well.

This is one from another day:

And the binding on a third quilt:

Such a beautiful tribute to a quilter!

How to avoid twisted binding when joining the edges

This video has a very good tip for joining the binding.  She folds the binding over at one point and this tip has certainly helped me.   I used to end up with twisted binding about 50% of the time, but with this folding idea, no more twisted binding!

A solution to leaking irons

I see complaints on the sewing boards about leaking irons and I thought I'd create a post about spray bottles.  Back in the day our grandmothers used a shaker bottle filled with water while she ironed.  Of course, they didn't have steam irons back then so they used what worked.



We have better choices than what our grandmothers had back in the day.  The bottle I use happens to be a spray bottle used by hairstylists.  It has a fine mist that doesn't saturate the fabric and it sprays continuously which is a great feature when you have a large area of fabric.  If you have a leaky iron try using a hairstylist spray bottle, there are even some available in quilt themes.

Just had to post this!

Tip for Longarming: Check your Wide Backing

When I load backing on the quilt frame I use the grain of the fabric, not the cut edge.  Here is an example of why it's important to check your wide backing.

This backing was wonky when it was wound on to the bolt.  I'm sure the person cutting it did cut it straight as it came off the bolt.  But as you can see, the fabric is cut way off the grain.

Be sure to check the backing and  straighten the grain if it is off.  If you don't want to straighten the grain, there is a simple solution...buy an additional 4 or 5 inches more after you've already added the 8" the longarmer needs.

Fortunately, this client sent a backing that had plenty of extra fabric so I didn't have to send it back.

Happy Sewing Machine Day

This machine is a Singer 201-3, made in the UK.  It sews beautifully.  I've made several quilts on it. I bought it via ebay and rewired it when it arrived.  The wiring was shot!  Now it's good for another 7 or 8 decades.

My travel machine is a Bernina 170, it's been a great machine!

I have another Singer machine, this one is a 15-91.  I used it to sew 1/4 inch 

leather for an upholstery project.

But my favorite machine is my Bernina 640.  It has over a million stitches on it.

Color Therapy top is done

Now onto the long arm!  For those just arriving at my blog, this is the quilt I'm making for my first grandbaby, due December 4th.

I'm excited to be invited along to my daughter's first OB appointment.  And we plan on hitting a few garage sales to look for baby things.

Reid Chamberlain, war hero

It is Memorial Day weekend and I'm thinking of a cousin of mine who died fighting on Iwo Jima in 1945, Reid Carlos Chamberlain.  He is a war hero.  He was a 1st Lieutenant in the Army and could have stayed stateside but he wanted combat so he resigned from the Army and joined the Marines.  He was a Sergeant when he was killed by a sniper on the island of Iwo Jima.  He was buried in a trench and his body has never been found.
Thank you just isn't enough, but I will say it to all those who lost their lives fighting for the United States.

 The Pain of War And Remembrance
By Alvin M. Josephy Jr. columnist & author
Published: December 25, 1999 in the New York Times

During World War II, I served as a Marine Corps combat correspondent on Guam, Saipan and Iwo Jima. When I came back to America after Iwo, I was riddled with guilt that although I had survived, I had left behind many brave friends who would never return home.
One of the men buried on Iwo was my foxhole buddy. He was a quiet, self-effacing sergeant named Reid Chamberlain who had a war record almost too melodramatic to be true. A career marine, he had been in the Philippines at the time of Pearl Harbor and had fought under Gen. Douglas MacArthur at Bataan and Corregidor.
When Corregidor finally fell, Reid escaped to the Philippine island of Mindanao, where, commissioned as an Army officer, he led a Filipino guerrilla band behind Japanese lines. Meanwhile, the Marine Corps told his mother that he had died at Corregidor, but she refused to believe it, insisting that one day he would show up at her front door.
After a year and a half, suffering from jungle illnesses, Reid was taken from Mindanao in a submarine. Back in the United States, he was accorded a hero's welcome, receiving the Distinguished Service Cross. He returned to his mother's home, just as she had known he would.
Although he could have spent the rest of the war stateside, he resigned his officer's commission in the army, told his mother once again that he would come back safely, and re-enlisted in the Marines.
He ended up in my outfit in Guam. By the time we left for Iwo Jima, we had become close friends, and once ashore, we shared a two-man foxhole, one of us asleep while the other kept watch at night for infiltrating Japanese.
One morning he and I were walking across an open area that we thought we had secured. Some shots rang out, and Reid fell dead, hit behind the ear by an enemy sniper hidden among some rocks. In an instant, the Japanese had claimed one of America's best men.
When the Marines once more informed his mother of his death, she refused again to believe it, and when I visited her after the war, she was still certain that he would eventually be coming home. A year or two later, when Congress authorized the return of the remains of servicemen buried overseas, Mrs. Chamberlain asked for Reid's body. During the battle, however, he had been buried near the Iwo beachhead in a long trench, and the Navy informed her that it could not find his remains. For years, Mrs. Chamberlain saw this as proof that Reid was still alive.
Meanwhile, like many other combat veterans, I found I could no longer talk about the war with anyone who had not been in combat. I could not reminisce about my experiences, even with my family, without great pain, and my eyes would become teary. So I became silent, too.
For long years, the generation of World War II veterans lost its public voice, and the patriotism and sacrifices of the war were largely forgotten by nonveterans.
Again and again, one could hear the common complaint at the funeral of a veteran: ''Our father never told us anything about his war experiences.''
Inevitably, some sort of a reversal was due, and it began, I believe, five and a half years ago with the attention paid to the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landing. Family members traveled to France with fathers, uncles, brothers and others who had been in the inferno of the D-Day landing, and in the military cemeteries they saw the aging veterans finally break down and weep at the graves of remembered comrades and then talk for the first time proudly and openly of their war experiences.
In a 50-year anniversary observance in the Pacific, I saw similar scenes in Guam. Though it came late, the sudden willingness of the World War II veteran to talk was a beneficial development.
Remembrance can still be painful and perhaps will always be so, for it continues to tap a deep feeling of guilt in those of us who survived while others never came back. But it has a good side, too.
With the willingness of the veteran to tell of his experiences, the younger generation, the one that will lead us into the 21st century, has come to understand and better appreciate the sacrifices made in World War II by Americans like Reid Chamberlain. After all, they gave everyone the right to live freely, which was possibly the noblest achievement of the 20th century.
___________

The article from the New York Times tells only a small part of Reid's World War II involvement.  You can read more about him here:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56117554/reid-carlos-chamberlain

Color Therapy

I've started the Color Therapy quilt as the first quilt for my coming grandchild.  The pattern is found in a book called Scrap Happy quilting.

Mother's Day surprise

What better news to get on Mother's Day than your daughter is pregnant with your first grandchild?

I went to the fabric store to buy fabric for the baby's first quilt. I'm making one quilt now and I'll make another one when we find out if it's a boy or a girl. She is due Dec. 4th. I'm so excited!

I'm working on this quilt now and have put Diamonds and Pearls on the back burner.

Diamonds and Pearls quilt with the Split Rects Ruler

Lovely spring weather has arrived in North Carolina and I want a new quilting project so I turned to youtube to find inspiration.  I stumbled across a tutorial for the Diamonds and Pearls quilt which is made using the Split Rects Ruler.  You can see the quilt in the background.

I used Omnigrid's highlighter tape called Glow line tape on my ruler.  I love this tape, really helps to see the lines on the ruler at a glance. It comes in 3 colors and I found it at JoAnn.

Ode to sewing machines #24

Many of you follow my "Ode to the Sewing Machine" posts.  We've all seen the ads on craigslist, ebay and elsewhere.  The clueless sellers give those of us who sew a belly laugh, or two!

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Rainy days of February

This is a client quilt I've started working on today. Should be done by the weekend!

Is there a better way to spend a Saturday than quilting?

If there is a better way I sure can't think of one!  This is a quilt top I made this week.  It's a freebie pattern from Jordan Fabrics called Ribbon Quilt.  I used a layer cake called La Vie En Rouge by Moda fabrics.

Home-Ec is taught in this school!

In homeschool today my son made his first loaf of bread.  Yes, we used a breadmaker but still, it's a loaf of bread!  We added home-ec to his schedule this month and it's going pretty well.  He wants to make more bread!

My latest quilt

I finished longarming a stipple design and put the binding on yesterday.  It's being shipped out on Monday!

A great buy on a used sewing machine

I decided to buy another Bernina sewing machine to use as a travel machine.  I'd rather not take my regular Bernina to classes, I don't want it to be accidentally damaged.  I found a used Bernina 170 for sale at my local dealer for $500.   It has 12 buttonholes, 128 decorative stitches and so much more.  But it is considered out of date computer-wise so it was very inexpensive.  I only use a sewing machine for straight stitch anyway so being out of date is not a problem!  If you're looking for a Bernina sewing machine I highly recommend looking for one on ebay, facebook markeplace and your local dealer.  You can get some great buys!

Scalloped Border

In between home school lessons I've been finishing the last border of the quilt top I started on Dec. 8th.  Here is the latest:

Progress on the Hearts and Apron Strings quilt

I wanted a challenge and to stretch my quilting skills when I chose the Hearts and Apron Strings quilt.  I'm happy with how it's turning out, it's a fun quilt and the pattern is a good one.  Today I'm working on the scalloped border and here's a picture of what I have done so far...




This is what it will look like when I get mine done...