A Martha Quilt

Last Tuesday at our Remnant get together at Cora's we played with some of Martha's fabrics that Justine had cut up into 5" squares.(Whew!) That large bin over to the right of Shirley and Christy is full of 5" inch squares! We decided one of the patterns we would use is the Disappearing 9 patch.

Here is one of the completed donation quilts. We have other disappearing 9 patch blocks in various stages of almost finished to just deciding on color of scraps. This one measured 42" x 54". Popcorn pantograph.

Martha would be pleased that we are enjoying our time together and using up her stash.

Scottie Dog Day of the Week Embroidery

I've finished the Scottie Dog dishtowels.  The machine embroidery designs are from SewWeird. The dishtowels are Martha Stewart woven towels with the days of the week already embroidered on them. I stitched out the doggies bows to match the color band of each towel.

Part of the embroidery I used some of my rayon thread stash, and some are polyester. I'm slowly switching my embroidery threads to polyester. My embroidery machine stitches so fast compared to my old embroidery machine and I have less breaks, fraying or thread snarls when I stitch out with the polyester threads.

One of the new embroidery threads I'm considering is Hemingworth. I purchased a few cones to test it out, and it is so much stronger and smoother stitching then the rayon I have used in the past.

The newer sewing, long arm and machine embroidery threads on the market now are amazing.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday---Machine Embroidery

As you know I've been busy quilting on the long arm, but I've been wanting to just sit in my sewing room and do some day of the week machine embroidery dishtowels---I do love to do machine embroidery. So, yesterday I started these cute dog designs.

They kind of remind me of someone I know and love!

6th Graders Quilt of Valor

I received this Quilt of Valor top last week. The quilt top is a project of the sixth grade class at Geyserville school in Northern California. Their instructor, Dora, did the sewing but they did the mixing of the colors and each planned their own block. It turned out very nice. Dora will do the binding after I ship it back to her so that the class can see that step of making a quilt.

The quilt will be done in time for the Cloverdale Citrus Fair and will be displayed along with pictures and hopefully some letters by the students. I'm so proud of these kids and their project!

Dora requested I send a picture of the longarm so the students can actually see what a "Long Arm" machine is and what it does. So here I am with "Polly".

The quilt is approx. 65 inches square. I quilted it with Superior Omni Thread in Bright Periwinkle. There are a lot of Star fabrics used in the string blocks so I used the Circle Lord "Milky Way" template boards.

Rain---and Quilting

It's been raining off an on for three days. 3-1/2 inches since late Thursday. Yay!

I loaded and finished Carolynn's beautiful donation quilt on the long arm yesterday.

The pantograph is "Fan Fare Grande" from Urban Elementz. A flowing easy to follow panto. It fills the space well

Finished Quilt of Valor

This is Mildred's 147th Quilt of Valor top that she sent me for quilting. Mildred does outstanding designs on her quilts, like the machine embroidery center block. Beautiful! This is the second quilt top I've completed for her, and I hope it's not my last. It is such a pleasure to work on her quilts.

Welcome---Rain

Maybe I haven't mentioned it, but it has been approximately 86 days since it has rained here in Sonoma County.  It's also been unseasonably cold at night but warm during the afternoons. Lack of moisture was beginning to take it's toll on everything around us. Dry skin to parched plants. Well, today the rain finally arrived! I'm not overly fond of rain, and Sassy thinks it's dreadful. But it's delightful to see and feel ---at least for awhile. It's way overdue.

New Storage for Under the Long Arm

I've been looking for storage units to put under my long arm for almost as long as I've owned it.  I've had a mishmash of containers, plastic drawers, wine bottle holder and baskets.

I wanted something that offered protection from dust and lint, but that I could see into. Because I also lower the frame at times, it couldn't be tall storage containers. Something reasonably attractive as well.

The Sunday paper had Michael's Arts & Crafts sales ad and the Jetmax Modular Storage units were on sale. I have one of these units in my sewing room and it has stood up to sliding the drawers in an out countless times,  and the weight of thread and other items reasonably well. Not much wear at all.

The units are basically 14.25" inch cubes with a variety of options, drawer units, shelves available that you put together with with a phillips head screwdriver and they have good assembly directions. I chose these four units. Three with drawers with clear fronts, and one open cube to store pantographs and my cloth side extenders. I also purchased the pegboard kit with hooks that is available for three sides of two of the  cubes. All my Circle Lord stepping discs fit in one of the drawers. The drawers are tall enough to store cones of thread upright.

This picture is of the open cube on wheels for the pantographs.

Here are two of the units under one side of the frame.  No more wasted space under the frame, and some nice storage.

What's on the Long Arm

I've been quilting on this lovely red, white and blue quilt sent me to by a Mildred. This is her 147th Quilt of Valor top.  I played with my DeLoa Jones Boomerang rulers on the center Eagle medallion. Rolling on----

iPad Image Capture

My previous blog posting was about Adobe Ideas and how I just emailed myself the finished drawing.  This a.m. Heartstring blogger, Mary J. emailed me and asked why I didn't do an image capture or screen save.

Well probably because I had never did one with my iPad, and didn't know how.  Mary says:

Holding the round iPad home button and the iPad on/off button down at the same time snaps a photo of what's currently on the screen and Mary said she uses it a lot. 


I tried it a few times, and it didn't work for me at first, but then I learned the problem was I didn't do it quickly. You have to hold the buttons for just a second sort of like the camera shutter button. The iPad screen turns white, and you can hear a click. Ta-da!

This is a screen shot of a drawing I had saved in Adobe Ideas. The continuous curve quilting path for a 9 patch block. Image captured and it showed up in Photos on the iPad. From there I sent the photo to my email. It arrived as a .png file, but I converted it to .jpg in my desktop photo album software before publishing it here.

Thank you, Thank you Mary!

Mary also has an 'apps' tab on her blog with other sewing and quilting related apps listed.