2020 Hindsight

 I couldn't resist using the pun instead of year end reckoning! 2020 was quite a ride, wasn't it? I know a lot of people hold high hopes for 2021, but I don't think flipping the calendar is going to ease the world's problems. Since I don't hold the answers to the world's problems, here is my quilty year end reckoning.

My empty spools for the year-11.9 miles worth of thread used. 

My finishes for the year- 24 finished quilts, 9 were UFO's, 15 new starts.

How did I do on my 2020 goal list? Not that great. Of the three deadline quilts I started the year with, I only completed two of those, but to be fair, the wedding quilt I needed to make can wait, since the wedding was postponed until late 2021.  

I had four quilts I wanted to work on. Of those I finished one, started the second, and never touched the other two. 

I needed to make a couple weighted blankets, and I didn't make any.

My main quilty goal for 2020 was to finish all the quilts from my late sister's clothes. That I was almost successful on, let's just say I'm satisfied with how far I got. 

Today is the last day of the year, and I won't get any sewing done today, or this weekend for that matter. I did manage to get three finishes this week, and I have two more pinbasted and ready to quilt, so I will start 2021 with a couple easy finishes. 

Here's the teal-ish quillow I was asked for. The backing is teal at any rate, and a few of the fabrics are. 

The green quillow I had to add orange to to make enough blocks. I could have used 2.5" strips and gotten all the blocks, but this completely wiped out my green 1.5" strips, so I opted for that. 

Another blue quillow, and I was happy to use up so many blue scraps on all the blue quillows I've made in the last two years! I always have blue fabrics overflowing my bins, and I don't even like blue!

Here they are all folded up into pillows and ready to gift. I don't even think I'm going to wrap these, they pretty much wrap themselves, and no one else is getting a gift tomorrow so not wrapping them seems better. 

We are doing a small get together tomorrow, half of what we wanted to do, but safer for all concerned. I know in my head that eventually life will be "normal" again, but Covid really has made the holidays hard. 

I have been thinking about 2021 quilting goals.

As always, I have some deadline quilts.

I have two nephews getting married in 2021, so two wedding quilts need to be made. I have two grandsons that need big boy bed quilts. 

I REALLY want to finish the weighted blankets I need to make! I'd love to get that off my list for good.

I'll be continuing to bust scraps and work on UFO's, but I don't have any solid goals as far as that goes. I've found using UFO's and scrap projects as my leader/ender project works quite well to make progress on those. 

I'm hoping to finish the king size quilt for DD#1, which I didn't work on at all this year, and finish the quilt for our bed, which I finally started working on. 

My quilty focus for 2021 is going to be quilt kits. I bought a lot of quilt kits from Craftsy/Bluprint, when they had really amazing sales. Some of them I only bought for the fabric, and I've taken those quilt kits apart already and integrated the fabrics into stash. Since the new Craftsy isn't selling quilting supplies, any quilt kits I get sewn up aren't likely to be replaced, I don't normally even look at them. I don't have a firm goal for the quilt kits, aside from getting a few sewn into quilt tops in 2021. I think I have four bins in my cutting station filled with quilt kits, and that's certainly more storage space than I'd like devoted to that. On the upside, concentrating on quilt kits means I can start a new quilt any time I want! I could use a quilt kit for one of the deadline projects I have, but I haven't decided, I have another idea for that that might be better. 

I do plan on 2021 being a no-buy year for quilting. That's not for any reason other than I don't think I'll actually need to buy anything. I did just finish off a roll of polyester batting, but I have one more roll, and I have plenty of cotton batting. If I run out of batting, I'll buy more, if I need something specific, I'll buy it, but buying just to buy? No thanks. I have plenty to keep me busy as it is. 

Wishing us all a better year in 2021! 

Melodie

Merry Christmas 2020!

It was a quiet Christmas around here. All morning it was just DH and I, then my sister came over and we had lasagna and watched Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO.

I've been working hard the past few days to get my sister's Christmas present done. I wasn't sure I was going to make it, and I knew she was the only person I'd see on Christmas Day besides DH. I finished it yesterday afternoon, so just in the nick of time!

DD

I made her a quilt from our late sister's sweaters. It was my first time working with sweaters, and although it sewed up easily enough, quilting it was another matter. If you want to try doing this, I strongly suggest you use a walking foot to piece it together, the pieces stretch horribly if you don't. I also opted to use 1/2" seams, which I think was a good call. 

I tried FMQ on it, but quickly decided to rip out those stitches. Why is it whatever you can take a few minutes to stitch in, takes SO much longer to rip out? The seams were simply too thick to not get caught on the FMQ foot. I tried raising my presser foot, but I couldn't raise it enough to work. I switched back to the walking foot and opted for some very basic straight line quilting, avoiding the big intersections. Normally I would have quilted it closer together than this, but between the time crunch and the seam issues, this will do. I washed it as soon as I had the binding on it, and it came through the wash just fine, so I think it will hold up OK. 

I did get a few quilty Christmas gifts.

DD#2 gave me the patterns, and DH got me the fat quarters, seam ripper, and a couple brushes for lint. DH asked me which colors I was low on, and I told him the same three colors I always tell him, orange, yellow and purple. I can never keep those colors in stash. I do use a lot of purple, but I think the yellow and orange are just because I have so little of those in yardage, that it doesn't take a huge project to wipe out several fat quarters of those, then I'm down to very little again. 

Since I wasn't sewing today, I actually took the morning to make DH some gluten free cookies, I hardly ever make cookies anymore. I have been cooking a lot lately, and I've been enjoying making some amazing soups while the weather is cooler. Cool weather doesn't last long in Southern Arizona, so I'm having fun making soup while the weather is cooperating with me. I made some chicken gnocchi soup that was better than any I've had in a restaurant, and a couple days ago I made a big pot of gumbo that was pretty terrific too. Beef stew was on the menu this week, and I make some good beef stew too. I will make soup in the LONG summers we have too, but it is just so much better when the weather is cool. 

Now I need to finish the three quillows that are Christmas gifts, but I didn't need to have done for today, because I won't see the recipients until New Year's Day. The long range forecast is looking like an outside dinner will be possible. 

The quillows just need the pockets sewn on and binding, so that should be easily doable in a week. Other than that, I'll be working on anything I don't want on my plate in 2021. I'm hoping for five more finishes this year, three of which are those quillows. If I can manage to get some cutting in that will be great, if not, 2021 will start with quite a bit of cutting! It's pretty optimistic to get that much done in a week, but hey, aim high, right? I'll have to take down all the Christmas decorations during that time as well, so not all my time is quilting time. The other two finishes I'm hoping for aren't complicated, and one is a partially assembled top already. Both of those will get simple quilting, so it's not impossible by any means. The cutting is unhonestly unlikely to happen, but you never know!

Merry Christmas and good wishes for a better 2021!

Easily Distracted

 I'm still thankful for deadlines, and those deadlines are keeping me going. I finished assembling three more quillow tops, and I've quilted one of those. Today I was working on cutting out the quillow pockets, and while searching for fabrics for the cotton side of the pocket, I came across a fabric that just kind of screamed at me to let it it out of the stash. 

I bought this fabric a few years ago, to make table runners for a wedding. I needed quite a bit of it for that purpose, but I ended up having some left. For that couple's first Christmas married, I used some of the extra to make them a set of placemats. The remaining bits have just been sitting in my stash, because the print is so large it's hard to use, and I didn't have enough for backing or borders of anything. I had a lot of strips 9" wide leftover from making the table runners, and one WOF piece about 1/2 yard. I decided to use this fabric for one of the quillow pockets, but that made the leftover fabrics even weirder sizes, so I really didn't want to put it back into stash. I decided I should be able to cut 8.5" squares from most of the pieces I had left, so I cut as many of those as I could after cutting the piece for the pocket. If I use an alternating block, I should be able to make a throw sized quilt. 

I pulled some other fabrics I thought might work for the quilt, and then I had to decide on an alternate block. There are a lot of options for 8" finished blocks, but I felt like I really wanted something that chained. I chose that block after scanning Block Tool and a couple quilt block books I have. I'm going to leave that as a bit of a surprise though. What would you choose for the alternating block? I debated all kinds of things, including things that don't chain, like Dresden Plates or Lemoyne Stars. I decided since this project is completely off track from what I should be working on, I didn't really want to mess with making it scrappy, because scrappy quilts take a lot longer to prep and cut. The cream background with sunflowers is a possibility to use for the border, but we'll see. The stack of teal fabric squares with sunflowers is all I could get from the fabric I had left, I have a few small pieces I'll cut down to 2.5" squares, but that's all that's it for that fabric. I have 39 squares, so I'm thinking 38 alternate blocks, which gives me 77 blocks total, set 7x11 for an 56x88" center. It's a bit tall and skinny, but I wanted odd numbers, and to use as much of the fabric as possible. Depending on what I do for borders, I could make it into a twin sized quilt. 

Thinking of an idea for a hard to use fabric is always a good thing. I'm looking forward to using the sunny yellows. I make very few quilts with yellow. I like yellow, I just rarely have anyone ask for yellow. Of course everyone asks me for blue, which I don't like, but somehow have the most blue fabric, even though I use it all the time! Seems to me the color you like least multiplies in your stash the fastest! The colors I like seem to jump out of stash pretty quickly. Purple is one of my favorite colors, and one I struggle to keep in stash. I seem to use it as fast as I buy it, but not for quilts for me, because I don't have a purple quilt. I really like green too, but I make a lot of blue/green/purple quilts. Hey, maybe I'm trying to "water down" all those blues with colors I like??? I don't mind doing patriotic colored things either, but red is my other favorite. I can only narrow my favorite colors down to three, Purple, green and red. I can't really choose between those three. 

I finished another Christmas present this week as week as well. It's all wrapped and ready to go. I have four more things I want to finish for Christmas, but we'll see. I think getting the three quillows I'm working on right now should be OK (I probably won't see the people they are for until New Year's anyway), but one thing I'd like done I've barely started. I ended up purchasing a gift in case I don't get it done in time. No one's feelings will be hurt, and then the homemade gift will just be a happy surprise later on. At least with an extra week before our family Christmas, I have extra time to see if I can finish what I want to get done. I'm not even sure a get together will be happening. It really depends on the weather, we had a very small get together on Thanksgiving, and kept everyone outside, and I'm hoping to do the same for family Christmas. If the weather doesn't cooperate, we may just skip it this year. At least we live someplace warm and gathering outside is a real possibility. If we can't do it safely, we won't do it at all. 

Thank Goodness for Deadlines!

If you saw the title of this post and thought I must surely be kidding, rest assured I'm not. This week I was very thankful for deadlines. You see, this was an awful, terrible, no-good week. If I hadn't had deadlines, I could easily have wallowed in negative emotions, and gotten stuck in a depressed funk. The only thing that kept me moving was the thought that I might not get the last of the Christmas boxes mailed on time. 

I needed to finish three quillows for this last Christmas box. Last week when I blogged I had two quilted, and I finished quilting the third last Friday. On Saturday life derailed, and we were in crisis mode for a few days, before things settled into a less than optimal conclusion. There's still a lot of uncertainty around, and honestly, a deadline was a comfort to me. It forced me to think about something else, which was a really good thing. 

The quillow for my youngest granddaugter was the smallest, so I decided to finish that first. Baby steps are good when you are upset. 

Here's the front. It's the most colorful quillow I've made. 

This is the only quillow I've made without a solid backing. There was just enough of this fleece for the backing, but not enough for the pocket, so the fleece side of the pocket is just a solid pink.

For the cotton side of the pocket I thought this fairy fabric matched nicely, and I went ahead and used it even though I didn't have a large enough piece of it and had to piece it. Even with a couple fairies chopped up at the seam I think it worked ok. 

Here's the quillow for DDIL, it's another monochromatic one. Blues of every shade are in there. 

I used some Nintendo fabric for her, because she really likes Luigi from Mario Brothers, and I thought this would be fun.

DS the Younger asked for green. 

He likes superheroes, especially Captain America, so he got Marvel fabric on the pillow front. I had some fabric with just Captain America, but it had no green, so this Marvel fabric worked better thanks to the Hulk!

Now I need to get everything wrapped so I can mail it. I've got other things that also need to be finished by Christmas, so I can keep plugging away on those.  I'm thankful that even when life goes pear-shaped, sometimes something as simple as a deadline can keep you going. 

Comparing My Bernina 440 QE to My Janome M7

 I've owned several sewing machines through the years, but three of the ones I own right now are my hands down favorites. I have several vintage machines, but my favorite of those is my Singer 201. It's really no contest, that's by far my favorite. I do most of my piecing on the Singer 201, and it's a beast, especially anywhere a lot of seams come together, it doesn't even pause. 

In this post I want to talk about my modern favorites, and I'll be doing a bit of comparing. 

I bought a floor model of the Bernina 440 QE when they were being discontinued in favor of the 500 series. I paid about half the retail price for it since it was a floor model. You can pick them up used, and if you need a good all around machine, I recommend it. My dealer told me they've never had a Bernina with as much use as I give mine, and I told them it's a good thing I piece on vintage machines then. I've never had any mechanical issues with the Bernina, but I do bring it in for a spa treatment once a year. 

I bought my Janome M7 this spring, on a really good sale with trade-in specials. Our tax return arrived at a similar time to the Covid stimulus check, and that's when the M7 was on sale, so it was really a perfect storm for buying a new machine with cash. 

In some ways, the machines are similar. They both have very strong motors that can sew through thick seams without a whole lot of drama. If I had to compare the ability of each for thick seams, the Janome would win by a smidge. 

Neither of MY machines are picky about thread (I never use metallic threads, so I can't testify to how they do with that) I've read reviews that say either of these machines can be picky about thread, but that hasn't been my experience. I often mismatch weights of thread in the top and bottom, no problems, I'll use any thread from 100 weight to a 28 weight, cotton, poly, rayon, a blend...no drama from either machine for me. I use different threads for different purposes, so it's a good test. 

Both machines have a variety of stitches, and I've had good luck using specialty stitches on both. The Bernina can only to a 5.5mm wide stitch, but the Janome can do a 9.5mm stitch. I don't use specialty stitches all that often, so that hasn't been a big deal for me. The Janome has far more needle positions available, so getting a perfect seam allowance is possibly easier on it? I haven't had any issues getting a 1/4" seam on the Bernina, so I'm not sure. 

I don't do machine embroidery, but if that's what you are into, they did make an embroidery module for the Bernina 440, and you can find them used fairly easily. The Janome M7 is not embroidery capable. 

Stitch regulation- my Bernina came with the Bernina Stitch Regulator, and I think it gave me a lot of confidence back when I was a very new free motion quilter. Now that I've been doing it several years, I don't even notice if I forget to change to BSR mode. Also, a stitch regulator is not a foolproof way to get perfect stitches, you can still get wonky stitches on stops and starts, if you move the quilt faster than the stitch regulator can function, or at the edge of the quilt if the sensor goes off the fabric. I still found it incredibly helpful at the beginning, but if you are eyeing BSR as a way to make you a master at FMQ fast, it's not magic, it still takes the hours of practice to get there. Now that I've done the time, it doesn't matter to me if I have the BSR or not, but I do appreciate the BSR foot has multiple sole options, including an open toe foot, closed toe foot and a clear foot. If you are new to FMQ, the BSR foot will make your stitching look better, not perfect.  The Janome has no stitch regulator options that I know of, but I haven't looked for one either. 

If I'm making garments, the Bernina wins handily. The Janome M7 is flatbed machine, no free arm for messing around with sleeves or collars. 

Presser feet- This one is tough, because it's a matter of cost vs quality. Bernina sells high quality presser feet, and you are going to pay through the nose for them. I have presser feet for my Bernina that I paid over $100 for, that are basically one trick ponies. They are super helpful for doing that one thing, but mostly they sit unused. Still, if I need to do that one thing, it's going to a great job. I never invest in a new presser foot unless I have more than one project that requires it. Also, on the walking foot, the Bernina has the absolute best markings! You can measure 1/2", 1/4" and 1/8" easily if you know where to look. 

Janome feet. The M7 came with SO many presser feet, I can't imagine ever having to buy one! It even came with a 1/4" walking foot in addition to the regular even feed foot. Some of the Janome feet are snap on, and some are not. To be honest, after years of Bernina and vintage presser feet, snap on feet feel flimsy to me. Don't get me wrong, once you lower the presser foot, the snap on feet work fine and are completely stable, but they feel flimsy when you first snap them on. I think that is more a matter of my perception than reality, but I'm throwing it out there anyway. Cost wise, to buy as many feet that come with the M7, I would have have to spend a couple thousand dollars to get the same number of Bernina feet.

Needle threaders- Here the M7 really shines! First let's look at where the button is to activate the needle threader on my Bernina 440

My finger is one the button for the Bernina needle threader in this photo. You can't see the needle threader unless you do some stooping and contortions. It's a matter of feeling around for it. 

Here's my finger on the needle threader for the Janome. Much easier, and I like it so much, I find myself trying this location when I sew on the Bernina even though I've owned the 440 for years, and only had the M7 a matter of months. 

The needle threader likely already had you notice visibility differences. I decided to use a 7" cutting mat to give you the best scale of the differences between the two machines as far a visibility of your project goes. I centered the needle over the center of the mat in each photo. 

The Janome has a high profile, which allows for some great visibility! There are only a couple squares that are blocked from view. 

Berninas are much lower machines, and most of the back two inches of the mat are blocked from view. You can also see the lighting on the Janome is much better, but I know a newer Bernina would have better lighting than this model. 

Throat/harp space- No contest here. I have quilted king sized quilts on the Bernina, but it was a chore. 

At the time I bought this, it was the largest throat I had had on a machine, and it felt spacious.  

When I bought the M7, I traded in my sit down longarm, which was incredibly finicky, and I was worried I might miss the extra space.

The answer to that is no, I don't miss the extra space my longarm had, because this is plenty of space. The high profile of the M7 gives me a lot of space, not to mention the 13" from needle to machine. 

A few other comparisons- both machines have needle up/down buttons, but on the Bernina you can also tap your heel on the foot pedal to make the needle go up or down. The Janome has a side pedal for that. I prefer the Bernina option. The Janome has an automatic thread cutter, which honestly, I've never used. I chain piece as much as possible, and when FMQ I have no idea why you'd need to use a thread cutter. I've heard it comes in handy when paper piecing, but I don't do that often. The Janome has a drop in bobbin, and the bobbins are plastic. I don't like the feel of plastic bobbins, but they are necessary for the low bobbin alert, which I do like. The Bernina has a vertical bobbin, and uses metal bobbins. No alerts when your bobbin is out. I've heard vertical bobbins do FMQ with better stitches, but honestly, the stitches on the Bernina and the Janome look pretty similar when I'm FMQ. You have to be a lot more tech savvy with the Janome, but I find most of it pretty intuitive. 

I don't plan on getting rid of either of these machines anytime soon, but let's say I needed to pack one away temporarily. I'd be packing up the Bernina and leaving the M7 out. I sew on both machines frequently, in fact, I've sewn on both of them today! I am assembling a quilt on the Bernina, quilting a quillow on the M7, and piecing blocks on the Singer 201 (which I sewed on yesterday). 

I like reading sewing machine reviews, and I hope you enjoyed this one. There are so many great sewing machines out there, what's your favorite feature on yours, or the feature you wish yours had?

Lest you think I haven't been getting anything done, I finished the dolls quilts I had basted a while back. I was tired of moving them around the sewing room, so getting them finished got them out of there altogether. 

I'll need to make another doll quilt soon too. 

I have two of the eight quillows quilted now, but I haven't cut the pockets or anything yet. Hopefully by next week I'll have a couple finished quillows to post.