I Was Attacked!!!

 

Today I took my fancy-dancy Viking Platinum 775 sewing machine into the shop/quilt store to get serviced.  As I was trying to leave the store I was ASSAULTED!  

By FABRIC!  

These two pieces of fabric decided that they needed to make a fast get-away and JUMPED into my arms!



Seriously!  It's not that I really "need" anymore fabric, but what could I say???  They were BEGGING me to take them home with me.

Actually, I really do need more pastel yellow.  It's hard to find a pastel yellow right now that isn't a 1930's repro.  Yellows are on the bright side right now, so when I saw this yellow on the 50% off shelf, I knew I had to get it.  I don't care about the border along the edges....I really just want the yellow part...but I figure maybe I can find a use for the border strips somewhere.  :O

As for the light blue plaid...plaids are hard to find in a good quality quilting weight.  There was only 5/8's of a yard, so I got it, too, from the 50% off shelf.  I figure I'll add it to my men's shirts that I've collected to "debone" and use the fabric make a quilt out of, ala Bonnie Hunter!  :)  

This past week, I've made 4 more 12" pastel blocks...

Although I've quilted 2 Dresden plate quilts, they both have been made by someone else and I was just doing the quilting.  This is the first Dresden plate block I've made (lower right-hand block).  It was fun and pretty easy!  I decided to take artistic license and, instead of using a plain color fabric for the center circle, I used the pretty green and pink floral.  It looks better in person than it does in the picture.


In the process of making these blocks, I finished 3 more Maverick Star blocks as my leaders/enders.

Since my Viking is now at the sewing machine spa getting a mani/pedi, I decided to pull out "Beyonce" to have available to do any sewing I might want to do.  

It's been a while since I've had her out for a workout, and you really need to run these old machines every so often to keep them in good working order.  Otherwise, they dry out and freeze up.

Why do I call her "Beyounce"???  


Because she is a light brown Singer!  :):):)

Okay...time to go out and do more cleaning up and burning on the new property!  Have a great weekend!

Loretta

Making Do...

Quote for the Day:

"There's more than one way to skin a cat"

~original author unknown

but quoted often by my dad!  :)

The story you about to hear is real.  Feel free to try this at home!  :)

On Sunday I decided that I needed to do something with these apples.  They had been sitting on the table for a while now and just weren't getting eaten.  Either I did something with them or they would probably end up in the trash.  :(  And I HATE to waste anything...a lesson taught me by my Depression-era parents!  :)

I decided that I wanted to make this...

But...uh oh...I only had less than 1/2 cup of brown sugar...

 
Without sending Andy to Walmart to pick up more, what's a girl to do???  (You didn't expect ME to go to Walmart, did you???)

Once upon a time, long, long ago, in a distant land, (???)  I had read in a book of helpful, frugal hints that you could MAKE brown sugar...but just how currently eluded me.  Thank God for the internet...you can GOOGLE anything these day!  LOL

Here's what you need to make your own brown sugar...
                                      

Take one tablespoon of molasses and one cup of white sugar and mix together with a fork or beater.   The instructions I read said that either way you are still going to have to use a fork, so I just went for the fork instead of dirtying up the beaters AND a fork.  

It starts out like this...

...but after about 45 seconds, looks like this....

...and after about 2-3 minutes total of mixing, you can't tell the difference between the homemade and the store bought.

Nice and fluffy and moist!  Just like brown sugar when you first open the bag!  :)

I decided to add some dried cranberries and dried dates to the apples just to give it a little extra "spunk"...

And here it is...fresh out of the oven...

MMMMMMM...boy was it good, too!  (I think there's one helping left from when I made this on Sunday, LOL)

On Saturday, I had taken my primary sewing machine into the shop to be cleaned...a "Well Baby" check-up, they call it there because they know that these sewing machines are our "babies"!  :)  But Sunday afternoon I was feeling the need to cut fabric for a new quilt and start sewing on it.  What is a lady (and I use that term "lady" loosely, LOL) to do when her main sewing machine is away from home?  

Well...let's see...there are four other sewing machines for me to choose from!  LOL  So I chose to bring "Beyonce" out of her case and sew on her for a while.

Why did I name this machine "Beyonce"?  Because she is a beautiful, caramel-colored Singer with fine moves!  :):):)  

Yep, this is the vintage Singer 301 that I bought at an auction last summer for the grand total of $2.00!!!   I have a Singer Featherweight 221, too, but I actually like this machine better, I think.  The 301 sews so smoothly and seems faster than the 221.  Also, the whole "tininess" of the 221 is a little strange to get used to, but this one feels more like a regular sized machine, even though it's about 3/4's the size of a full-sized machine.  The other thing I like about this machine is that you don't have to turn the fly wheel to get the needle moving, and I recall that when I did a few test runs with the Featherweight, I always had to turn the fly wheel to start the needle. 

I've not done much sewing with either of these machines until now.  I had purchased them to take to quilting classes, but so far hadn't taken any classes.  This November, I'm taking a workshop from Bonnie Hunter, so I thought I'd pull out this one and experiment with it to find my perfect 1/4" stitch before actually trying to take a class with it.  It has taken some time to find my perfect 1/4", but I finally found it by having Andy break off the flange of a 1/4" flanged sewing foot.  :)  By using the flange, I couldn't get a "scant" 1/4" and the seam allowance was a couple threads to wide.  But by breaking off the flange and running the fabric directly down the right edge of the foot, I get the PERFECT 1/4" seam!  :)

On Sunday, I had cut out some blue and neutral pieces from my scrap bins to make a Blue Ridge Beauty quilt as a leader/ender project.  (Leader/enders are pieces of fabric you put under your needle when you finish sewing so you aren't always clipping threads.)   Instead of using just trash pieces of fabric, if you put precut pieces to a quilt through there, then you end up with a second quilt...eventually!   However, I wasn't able to just cut these pieces and let them be...I had to sew some together to see what the block looked like in person... and I now have 20 completed blocks!  LOL  I think this L/E project has quickly become my primary project!  :)

Loretta

It's a Disease...

Quote for the Day:

"We admitted we were powerless over our addiction..."

~ Step 1 of the Twelve Step Program

"Hi, my name's Loretta, and I am addicted to sewing machines."
"Hi, Loretta, welcome!"

I can see it now...Sewing Machine Collector's Anonymous.  Seriously...we need a program!  Oh...and one for Fabric Collector's, too!  :)

Okay, okay...confession time! 

Last night Andy TWISTED my arm and FORCED me to attend an auction with him.  Some of the items looked like they were from an estate, but most of the items came from an antique store.  They were all very clean and nice and some even still had the tags or stickers from the store on them.  (The auctioneer said they tried to remove the stickers, but some they couldn't get off easily.)

I had seen the pictures of things up for auction on the online site we go to to scope out auctions we want to attend, and I had seen a vintage sewing machine that was going to be at this auction.

Now, let me tell you right here and now that we saw that another more popular auctioneer was having an auction last night, too, so we figured that the dealers, etc., would be at that auction and the "regular folks" like us would be at this auction. 

And I can tell you right now that that is exactly what happened!!!  Things went DIRT CHEAP!  Much cheaper than we could have even imagined! 

So, in my defense, I saw it as my responsibility to bid on this vintage sewing machine that I've been wanting to add to my collection for a while now...

For those of you who don't know, this is a Singer 301 long bed, slant-needle sewing machine, manufactured in Anderson, SC, in either 1950 or 1951.  It is considered by sewers and quilters to be the "Big Sis" to the Singer Featherweight, one of which I was able to purchase at an auction in Maine in April.   

This machine was made so it could be portable or to fit into a special cabinet.  The left-hand side of the bed flips up for storing in it's case.  Mine came in a case, but it was so water damaged that it is not worth trying to save. 

Now, for the kicker...remember when I said it was my responsibility to bid on this machine???  Well...I was the ONLY bidder on this machine and got it for a crisp $2.00 bill!!!

Okay...all of the quilters who read my blog are now picking themselves up off the floor at this point!  LOL

They sell on Ebay for between $75 and $225!!!  See...I told you things were going cheaper than even what we could have imagined! 

As soon as I got it home, I looked at the manual to find out how to oil and lubricate the machine and motor...did as the manual said to do...then plugged her in and she purred like a kitten!  YAY!!!  She was very clean, inside and out.  If it hadn't been for thread on the bobbins that came with her, I would have thought she had never been used as there are no scratches or pin marks in the paint on the machine's bed.

I feel extremely blessed to have gotten this little gem!  :)  Right place, right time! 


We also picked up an antique Warren Telechron mantel clock made during WWII, from what we were able to find on the internet.  Plugged it in and it started right up!  :) 

This is the picture we found on the internet of our clock...





Ours is in almost perfect condition (think antique store item) and we paid a whopping $4.00 for it!  :)

I'm sure that whoever was having this stuff auctioned off was not too happy with the low prices that things were going for.  :(  But as buyers, Andy & I were very happy!  :D

I said in my last blog post that I would review the audiobook that I was just starting at that time...

"This Is Not The Story You Think It is...A Season of Unlikely Happiness" by Laura Munson gets TWO THUMBS DOWN from me.  I'd give it more thumbs down, but I only have two to use.

I wasn't even able to make it past the first hour.  Boring and self-adulatory is the best way to describe it.  It was about as interesting as reading a quantum physics textbook.  :(

Okay...that's my opinion...everyone's entitled to their own opinion,  and that was my opinion and review of that book...for what it's worth!  :)


Today I made another batch of blackberry jam...this time I made cooked jam and water-bath canned it.  This is the third batch of jam I've gotten from our blackberries this year...the other two batches were freezer jam and I got 7 jars from each batch.  The cooked jam recipe made 10 jars today.  I think there may be enough berries left on the bushes to make one more batch before they come to the end of their harvest. 

Loretta