New Machine Day

It came! It really came! The sewing machine my DH surprised me with for my birthday arrived yesterday. 

A few months ago, I had told him how it was surprising to see Janome machines for sale on the Costco website, and we looked at some of them together. But then I dropped the whole thing, because I don't really truly need a new machine, mine had been working just fine. So it was a very lovely surprise.

 It was honestly a little weird that we ended up buying this without me sewing on it at a dealer, but in these times of COVID, I really didn't want to travel long distances, and sit in an indoor location for an hour with a salesperson breathing over my shoulder. (Just my imagination there on that part). I figured if it didn't work or I hated it, I could just take it back the next time we venture out to Costco.

I got it all set up very quickly and I started in on sewing the current project (a table runner natch) It's so quiet and beautiful and powerful. You don't even need a presser foot, the glowing green button will start and stop sewing. Not sure I'll use that, but hey, if I have a foot issue, that's nice to know. 

There's a whole extra inch of sewing space, so I can't wait to try and sew a bigger quilt.

The lighting is so fabulous and bright! Hooray for LED's!  I can actually see what I'm doing without a bunch of extra desk lamps.

Really amazing to see just how things have changed in 15 years.

Here are the feet that it came with (not pictured is the enormous buttonhole foot). I was slightly disappointed to learn that the new machine is a 9mm shank so none of my old feet will fit. Specifically my 1/4" foot. But there's a programmed stitch for exactly 1/4". That'll have to do for now.

I tried out some of the decorative stitches on an old pillow case. This isn't done with the correct threads, but I love seeing how this looks. And these words aren't even using the alphabet section.

Starry Table Topper

A very pretty selection of fabrics for another table runner from the Modern Quilter's Studio. 

I guess I'm making this as my one and only Christmas decoration this year. 

We're not doing a tree for the first year ever. 

It just doesn't feel right somehow. 

 

Color Splash Table Runner

 

Getting ready to make another table runner, this time with one of the recent patterns with fabric from the Modern Quilter's Studio. It's going to be a rainbow of fun working with all these lovely and colorful strips.

 I guess I'm on a roll with these things, my tables are getting dressed up so regularly now!

Wish me luck working with un-pre-washed fabric. I don't dare wash those strips.

Rock Candy Decided

 

Here's the answer to yesterday's question on whether to add more quilting. 

As you can see, the answer was yes.

I like how it looks quilted all over.

And even though the metallic threads were a pain (as usual) I like how they sparkle along with the flecks of gold in the background fabric. It's going to look pretty on the table.

Tah-dah! There it is, all done. Pointy points, and flatter than flat.

Done or Not

 

I'm at the point in quilting the Rock Candy table-topper that I could be calling this one done. There are a couple more projects in the Journey2Nebula event that I wanted to try and I could start working on them.

I've outlined all the star diamonds with metallic thread. The background triangles and borders are fairly closely free-motion quilted. I could just put the binding on and let it be done. I'm still so excited about the pointy points!

But I think I might want to add more quilting within the star diamonds. Not in metallic, because I was having a terrible time with those threads (like always). Maybe just some straight lines and not free-motion, but I'm not decided at this point.

And Now, December

 

My monthly marker collage for Instagram is again several photos layered together in SnapSeed. Here are the three photos: 

First was this kaleidoscope picture of my pincushion taken with KaleidaCam.

A photo of the penumbral lunar eclipse.

This photo of the yellow leaves of my pomegranate bush (tree?) outside my window.

On The Back

 Now that the Safe At Home quilt top is finished, I'm working on using up the scraps for the pieces that will make up the back.

There were a lot of leftover half square triangles, some due to the way the blocks were made and some due to me misreading one of the row instructions.

So there are a whole lot for me to work with.

I take a picture when I like the layout and use it to make sure when I'm sewing I get it together correctly.

It's going to be hard to get myself to stop playing with these "scraps", I'm really still happy with using these fabrics and colors. But I am running out of the grays that I used for the quilt top.

Safe At Home Finished

 

After months and months, my version of the Safe at Home quilt is done. Well, at least the quilt top is finished. I'm very happy with how it turned out. And I actually like how the last row turned out.

Now I'm deciding on whether to quilt it myself or take it to the local long-arm quilter that I used last time. And I'm working on making the back, more on that later.

Covid Mini Quilt Challenge

 I've started working on a piece to submit to the Curated Quilts newest mini-quilt challenge, the theme is Honor.

This is the fat-quarter pack that covers the color palette for the challenge. The fabric is Bella Solids by Moda. I think it's an interesting grouping of colors, and I'm sketching designs and thinking about how to incorporate the theme of "Honor". More on this one later.

Layered Rock Candy

 

Time to sew this Rock Candy table topper together the rest of the way, but one last change in the layout.

Here it is with the borders added on and layered for quilting. No exterior points were cut-off or un-pointy! Woohoo! This is a big deal for me, I think those rulers really helped in my improved accuracy. The rest of it went together pretty darn well too. I really like the background fabric that I chose. Now to do some quilting. Free motion or just lines...hmmmm.

KaelidaCam

 

I'm having fun playing with a new iPhone app, KaleidaCam. It was recommended by someone I follow on Instagram, Kate Godfrey, (You can follow her at @gollyokate )   There's just something about kaleidoscopic images and the thrill of turning what you see with your naked eye into something so complicated. Endless fun.

These two are the first attempts I did with the app taken from a top-down view of my pincushion. The possibilities of this are endless and the app itself is very easy to use. I'm finding it much more relaxing that playing a game or reading twitter.

It really reminds me of a mantis shrimp.

I had a kaleidoscope program on my old laptop, Kaleidoscope Creator but it wasn't compatible with the Mac so I've missed being able to create kaleidoscope pictures. That was just editing an existing photo into a kaleidoscopic view of it, this new app can do that, but it's true creative power is in using it live.

Safe At Home Visual Decision Making

 

Here's how the final row in the Safe at Home quilt looks as originally designed with the rest of the rows all sewn together.

I really dislike the solid stripe of yellow, and the absence of the background as in all the other blocks. It looks like it belongs on another quilt except for the same colors/fabrics.

Turning some of the orientation of the blocks helps a little, breaking up that big yellow line is better. 

But it's still missing the grey background.

Adding a bar of grey and reorienting the blocks to have the purple which is a thinner rectangle helps.

But it's still just too much yellow. Adding in some more grey instead of the final yellow logs in the block might work. I still haven't decided. Maybe I'll take one block out and frame them in grey if I can work the math out. Or maybe I'll just make a different block altogether... It is my quilt after all, right?

Go Bears!

 

Here's the logo of the university I attended, University of California at Berkeley. This is the one my parents and mom's parents did too. We yell "Go Bears!" all the time, it's a generic Woohoo! for our family at this point. Sometimes in public, my dad will yell it at someone wearing Cal branded clothing. Every now and then the person will yell it back at him which he loves. Usually he gets a confused look. sigh.

I'm working on making cards for people's birthdays ahead of time (instead of on the day of, hah !) so I'm making one for my dad. I've been playing around with importing images into the CriCut software and the Cal logo seemed like a good one to try out.

It was super easy to bring the image into the program. I really like how the Design Space software works on my laptop better than on the iPad, it's much more robust. So...I really like how it looks on this bear! 

Go Bears!

Rock Candy Decisions

Decisions decisions.

When I last posted about the current Journey2Nebula project, Rock Candy, these first two were the arrangements I had started out with. I settled on the second one, having the darker grey make a prominent star in the center.

I decided to play around with it before just sewing it together and being unhappy with it, and I'm glad I did! Here I tried to put the lightest colors on the outside. But it doesn't quite work.

More fiddling around, looking much better, but my eye keeps getting stuck on that super dark grey with white plus signs.

Ahhh much better. Worth the time to cut a few extra pieces of fabric. Still pretty dark, but not as contrasty within the fabric shape itself.

I think this might be the final version that I've landed on. But I am still hesitating to start sewing it together. Maybe I'll just dive in. I like the dramatic look the dark grey background gives this piece in process.

Last Row

 

Jumping backwards to finish the final row of the Safe At Home quilt. This row is an offset log cabin. And  my first decision was whether or not to include some of the grey background in the blocks. As it's designed, there wasn't to be any background. 

After 'making visual decisions visually,' I went with using none of my background color, grey. Of course this is just a single block and not a row's worth of blocks, so I'm still a little unsure of how it will look with such a background intensive design for all the other rows in the quilt. 

Visually it will be quite an "anchor".

The colorful chaos of my worktable. The box has all the cut pieces not used from this project. Presumably I'll assemble them into something that goes on the back of the quilt.

November, November

Happy November, it's one that's I've been looking forward to for four years. 

The entire state of California, which is where I live was mailed an absentee ballot. So that's how we voted this year. We dropped our completed ballots off in one of the many convenient ballot drop boxes, and done. Easy peasy, no waiting in line and worrying about catching Covid. I really really wish it was this easy for every single American citizen. It should be, and it's not, which is not fair--on purpose. Which is even worse in my opinion. 

It was nice that they gave us an "I Voted" sticker in the absentee ballot packet. I put it on the back of my cellphone for now.

Then after we had dropped the ballot in the box I wondered if it had been picked up. It was super easy to track my ballot online which was pretty cool to be able to see where it was in the process. They even gave me a digital sticker:

The monthly marker image above is another Snapseed creation, combining two photos and a bunch of edits. It's this one:

plus this one: