Rearranging Again!

Will I ever get my sewing room just the way I want it? Unlikely, especially when you consider I snagged another vintage machine to play with this week! DH and I had gone thrift store shopping (my favorite type of shopping aside from online) We went to this thrift store we had never been to, and in the corner I spied a sewing cabinet.

Of course I had to see what was in it, and it turned out to be a Singer 99K. Hmmmm...tempting...How much?....$40....This machine is definitely coming home with me for $40! DH is so sweet, and as soon as he saw it, he asked if I wanted it, before he even saw the price. Even more a sign of his awesomeness, he insisted we drop it off for servicing while we were out, so the technician could make sure all the wiring was safe, and rewire if necessary. The technician was surprised I bought a 99K in a cabinet, and when I got home and did a little research, I found out why. It seems cabinets for 3/4 sized machines are rare indeed, and in all likelihood, the cabinet may be worth more than the machine.

I started researching cabinets after I found out how rare they are, and I am really confused now. The ISMACS site says there was only one cabinet made by Singer for the 99K, and this isn't it. I did a google image search for 99K cabinets, and I found a couple others in this style, but none this color, they were all dark. I am sure this is the original color. I did not take a photo of the machine before we dropped it off, but I did look up the serial number on my I-phone just as we were carrying it into the sewing shop. My machine is a 1957, which makes sense with this color cabinet. My parents still have the dressers they had when they got married, and they are just this color, and they were married in 1958. The cabinet has no markings on it at all, so I am wondering if perhaps there was another company making cabinets for Singer machines?

At any rate, I really want to play with the 99K when it comes home next week, and I need some more time with my 221  Singer Featherweight, but it's hard to use them when they are not set up. This is where the rearrange came in. I've spent lots of time in my sewing room this week, but moving pretty slow because of the mumps, so I had lots of thinking time. I needed frequent breaks from whatever I was doing, so I would just sit in the sewing room and look around. I realized if I blocked off part of the doorway, which is large, I could move my sewing cabinets around and have more machines set up at once.

Here I moved a cabinet to partially block  the entry to the room, and I have the cabinet opening to the hallway, so I could use the back of the cabinet as a sort of extended wall area.

Now my Juki 98QE is right when you enter the room, and I put the back leaf down. Under the leaf towards the far wall, there is a microwave cart underneath it, which fits when I remove the wheels. The smaller leaf has the plastic drawers under it that you can see in the foreground.

Here is the leaf up, so you can see there is room to have it up.  My problem it those bookcases on the right belong to my daughter (DD#2), and she is an Amazon bookseller. She must have access to those shelves. She only has four sets of shelves in my sewing room, I donated one wall to the cause. In her bedroom there is a maze of bookshelves, and she has somewhere between ten and twelve sets in there. She basically sleeps in a bookstore.

Because of the book issue, I will only raise the back leaf when I am quilting, but the Juki cabinet is fully functional where it sits now.

I moved my Bernina Aurora 440 where my Juki had been, and now I have an adjustable height table with my Featherweight, and the new-to-me Singer 99K cabinet on the backside of the Bernina cabinet. The Singer 99 cabinet looks so sad with no machine in it! It should be back in a few days.

Here is the Bernina side of the arrangement. I think with my Ott lite in the middle, it can be used with all three of these machines. I'll have to try it out.

This section of my sewing room stayed pretty much the same.

I am not liking the view of the back of that cabinet, so I think a small wall quilt is needed to cover the fiberboard backing. I had to stack my white strip drawers. They had been under the Juki back leaf when it was in it's previous location, and always up. Please forgive the messy surfaces, I had to move a LOT of stuff today, and I just got too tired to deal with the last of the piles.  Most of the stuff on my sewing cabinets are current projects, and my cutting table has a bunch of fabric from several projects I am currently cutting. At times the room will look worse than this, and I'm hoping at times it will be better. I haven't finished moving little things like trashcans yet either. I think the ironing board is going to have to go up only when I need it. I think I will likely use a small pressing board when I am working on blocks, and only bring out the ironing board for yardage or when I am assembling a quilt top.

I'm anxious to see how this arrangement will work for me. I'd love to have a different project going at every machine, and I could pick and choose what I wanted to work on each time I was going to sew. I ordered some bobbins for my 99 today, it only came with one, but at least the bobbin and bobbin case were there! The machine moved freely, and the wiring looked to be in good shape, so I'll be surprised if the motor has major issues. It can be converted to a handcrank if it has a bad motor, and I've been wanting a handcrank, so even that would be OK.

Denim Scraps

I'm still not feeling great, but I am trying to get something done. Yesterday I decided I'd pull fabrics for a quilt, and start cutting out two quilts (one already has the fabrics together) I pulled some fabrics, but when I looked at my cutting table, I realized I would need to be some cleaning up of a few things before I could cut much. I had a big pile of denim scraps from my jean deconstruction binge early last month. These scraps were too small for the project I was cutting for at the time, and too oddly shaped to want to put them with my denim stash. I have chosen a couple different patterns I want to try with the denim, so I knew which sizes I could cut and would work with my plans. I hadn't tackled the scrap pile before now, but it was time.

This is a good representation of the type of pieces I had in this pile. Any large pieces were already stored with my denim stash in its fancy cardboard box ;-) These were the odd bits, and there were more in the pile than I thought there were. I was only able to cut for 20 or 30 minutes at a time before I needed a break. Like I said, still not feeling great. I started working on the denim yesterday. I didn't think I'd have much time to cut today, because I had the twins all day, but DH was home, and he took them outside for a couple hours so I could have some peace. I cut some while he was outside with the twins, then again during their nap. I was so close to finishing the stack I went and cut some more after dinner. 

Here is what is left of the denim scraps. Since I was cutting for specific quilts it was a little easier to decide what sizes to cut from each scrap. I basically just started with the largest size I could cut from each scrap. Since I was saving down to two inch squares, there are a lot of denim bits in my trashcan, but none bigger than that.

Speaking of my trashcan, I had been using just a small trashcan next to my cutting table, but I was tired of having it fill up so quickly when I was cutting or trimming bits of batting. I save any larger pieces of batting and piece them together to make usable battings, and I save even 1 1/2" squares of fabric, but still, when I am on a big cutting spree, especially of scraps when there are all kinds of odd shapes, or when I am trimming a bunch of string blocks, the little trash can was filling up all the time. DH had to go out to buy a new weed eater, so I had him pick me up a kitchen sized trash can to go next to my cutting table. SUCH an improvement! I must be a little odd to be so happy about a new trash can :-)

There are still a few things on my cutting table to deal with, but even now I can likely start cutting for the quilts I wanted to cut. At least the denim is all dealt with for now. I will have to break out the larger denim pieces to cut more of the sizes I cut the last couple of days, but that can wait until I am actually ready to start those quilts. I'm not planning on doing any sewing until the weekend, but I'm hoping to get quite a bit of cutting done. Having a bunch of quilts cut out and ready to go works well for me, because I love to piece, but have to psych myself up to cut. I don't hate cutting, it's just something I procrastinate on, and then go overboard cutting a bunch all at once. I've learned to deal with my odd habits, and it all works out in the end.

A Quilty Finish!

I finished the quilt I was working on, and here it is! All the tan areas are micro-stippled, even the narrow one inch border, and the green areas have concentric diamonds straight quilted. The green border just has some large meandering in it. This is technically a two color quilt, just green and tan, but I used about every shade of green in it ;-) I have several scrap quilt books that specifically say you can't mix shades like this, and I ignore all of that advice. I like the movement that all the different shades create.

DH wants to give this quilt away at a scooter function next month. I'm sure he would have preferred a scooter themed quilt, and I had one in mind, but not enough time available to make it.

Things have slowed way down around here, because I am sick. If the baseball sized lumps on my neck are any indication, I have the mumps. If it's not the mumps it is a nasty viral infection, and any way you look at it I'm contagious, so no babysitting for me this week, except for the twins who are already exposed. I'm not really motivated to do much right now, and frequent napping is more my current speed. I had the chicken pox in my thirties, so getting the mumps in my forties seems reasonable, right? I must have saved all the childhood illnesses for adulthood :-P

I don't know what I am working on next, and honestly, I don't much care right now. I needed to get this quilt finished so I did. If I feel like sewing I can work on the twins quilts, and I have several quilts I need to get cut out. I have lots of scraps that need to be cut too, and maybe getting my Accuquilt Go cutter out will be the least taxing option. I finished a book last night, and downloaded a bunch of free books onto my kindle, so that may be my more my speed right now, just chilling out, reading, and hopefully healing!

Grandkids

I actually have been doing some sewing, quilting on a quilt in little bits of time here and there. I don't want to take a photo of that until it's finished, so I'll put up some pics of my grandkids instead.

The twins have been on an apple kick, asking for apples all the time! I'm hoping to take them to an apple orchard soon, so they can see where apples come from. The apple orchard closest I want to take them to is open until the end of October, and it's about a 90 minute drive each way.

 

The front closet is a prime piece of real estate in our house. The twins hide in there all the time, and since Miss E is visiting, she tried to get in there too.

Here is Miss E playing with her Aunt (DD#2)

 

I borrowed a pic from DD#1, and here are Mr. Z and Mr. J waving from South Africa!

DDIL's knee surgery has been postponed, so they will be going home on Saturday. Some insurance issues need to be worked out before it can be rescheduled. 

Now I will have a bit more time to sew than I had anticipated, so finishing this quilt for early October should be much easier now. I made a rookie mistake when I started quilting it, and I had forgotten to change the tension when I had switched from FMQ the last quilt, to using the walking foot this quilt. I didn't do a sample piece, which I know I should have done. The quilt I am quilting is in sort of a barn raising layout, so I was quilting concentric diamonds to mimic the piecing. When I had finished about a 2 ft by 2 ft area, I ended the thread, and noticed the tension on the back was awful! I had to rip it all out, and the only good thing about that was the tension was so bad it was fairly quick to rip out. When only sewing in little bits of time, it's easy to forget things, and hard to catch back up. 

I am finished all the straight line quilting on the quilt, and right now I am free motion quilting the border. I plan on changing thread colors after the border, and go back and stipple in the light diamond paths in the center. I'm hoping to have the quilt finished by the end of next weekend at the latest.

The next project is still undecided. I need to cut out a baby quilt I need before December, and I just got a request for more baby bibs. If I cut out the baby quilt, I can work on it and the twins bed quilts at the same time. I have a couple other quilts I want to get cut out as well. Soooo many ideas in my head! I am learning to quilt in little snatches of time, so I get to see progress, which is really encouraging!

Another Thing Scratched off the List!

Miss E was in need of some more bibs, and when I went to buy towels to make more I was amazed at how much towels had gone up in price just since I made some bibs a few months ago. I found some hand towels at a thrift store that looked new or almost new, so I bought much better quality towels for just 99 cents each!

I don't get too concerned about bibs matching exactly, so I have six colors of ribbing and I just mix and match. On the blue ones I used some appliques I've had hanging around for a while.



The pink ones get to be twins, and have the same trim on them, and the purple/gray towel is printed so I didn't add anything.

I started quilting a quilt today, and that's what I'll be working on tomorrow. I'm hoping to knock this quilt out fairly quickly, as this will be a busy month for me, and I need it finished by the first weekend in October. While I am working on the quilting, I'll be thinking about what sewing project gets priority next. I have a lot of options, and I really don't know which I'll choose. I do some of my best thinking while I'm sewing, so the simple quilting pattern I chose for this quilt will be prime thinking time.