Reclaiming Bobbins

I hear lots of people who say they only have three bobbins for a machine, or maybe five. My hats off to you, because I can't function like that. My vintage machines I use almost exclusively for piecing, and for piecing, I usually use one of one of five colors; white, cream, tan, light gray, dark gray. I always like to have at least one extra bobbin wound of each color, so if I have ten bobbins for each vintage machine, it is sufficient for the way I work. I prefer more than ten bobbins, but I can make it work.

Where things get interesting, is when I am talking about the machine I use for garments or quilting, then I need lots of colors, thus, lots of bobbins. It gets even more absurd when you start talking different thread fibers.

I used to have a Juki 98 I used for quilting, and I had 100 bobbins for it. It may sound like a lot, but I make a lot of queen/king quilts, and I start by winding at least ten bobbins when I'm quilting something that large. I sold the Juki, so now I both quilt and make garments on my Bernina 440. I only have about 50 Bernina bobbins, and those are divided between cotton and poly threads. I'm a big fan of bobbin savers, and I use the different colored ones to my advantage. I always put cotton threads in the purple bobbin savers, poly in the red. I use the blue ones for my vintage bobbins. I was getting to the point where I was thinking about buying more Bernina bobbins, but they are pricy, and I've been Christmas shopping, so it is lousy timing. I would really love more Bernina bobbins, maybe I'll put those on my Christmas list, but for now, I needed to reclaim some of the ones I had.

One of my Christmas projects is making placemats for the grandkids. Nothing fancy, just novelty fabrics cut 12x18 inches, with one layer of batting between. I made the twins some a few months ago, and them eating on placemats really helps contain the mess. I decided to use only bobbins when sewing these placemats, bobbins top and bottom, matching colors best I could, buy mixing poly and cotton threads, just to empty some bobbins.

I made 18 placemats in two LONG days. There are only 17 in this pic, because Miss S claimed the one made with Frozen fabrics. I quilted these with bobbins, put the binding on with bobbins, and guess what? I've got some empty bobbins now! Twenty empty bobbins to be exact.

 

My next Christmas project is pillowcases, and since I'm using the Magic Pillowcase Tutorial, the seams are all enclosed, and therefore I can empty more bobbins on those!

I finished my first pillowcase today. Here it is.

This one is for my son-in-law in South Africa. They know they are getting pillowcases, so it doesn't matter much if I post it. I was pretty happy with how it came out, and I'm looking forward to making more. 

I'm pretty much out of sewing time for a couple weeks. We are hosting a bridal shower this weekend at our house, and there is lots of cleaning, decorating, and cooking to do for that. Next week DH and I are running away for a few days, something I am completely looking forward to! I can get back to sewing when we get back, but I am really going to enjoy kicking back in the hotel hot tub and relaxing after the last crazy month. 

DD#1 took an awesome pic of her two oldest, playing in the superhero capes I made them. I'll leave you with that pic.