Merry Christmas!

Hello, everyone. I just realized that the Christmas season has been so busy that I hadn't posted in a while. Sorry about that!

This is our Flight Into Egypt ornament. That actually took place a good some months after the birth of Jesus, but the photo came out better than the glass Holy Family ornament.

We're expecting a traditional South Texas Christmas, enjoying the official food of the season: tamales! We shouldn't even need jackets for going to Christmas Mass as the cool air of these few days is supposed to slide on out.

I wish for all y'all a merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year.🎄🪅

Since the embroidery machine goes to class sometimes

Hello, everyone. The embroidery machine goes to Sewing Club sometimes and carrying it is rather awkward. Toting a four-year-old child in arms awkward--both arms needed and while it doesn't weigh as much as the four-year-old, it's an inanimate object and can't help at all. So I decided to look into a way to carry it. Thought about a webbing harness but couldn't figure out how to design one that would support the machine without major wobbles. Then I was looking at Sailrite.com and found a video about a tote. Theirs is a little smaller than this but it looks sturdy.

The footprint of the machine is 22"x18". 

I have now learned a lot about Dacron sail cloth (the interfacing) and Cordura. And that this project is at the very edge of the ability of my Janome HD3000 sewing machine. 

There is a little bit of extra fabric,  maybe I can make some little things out of that. 😀

Spray basting a new quilt

Hello, everyone. The weather in south Texas has finally cooled off. We walk in long sleeves in the morning now.

This is the newly spray basted quilt. It's mostly based on a panel print with a national parks theme. The happy Alaskan bear in the middle was added; there was a block of ugly text there that I didn't like.

This is the happy bear. He is an applique done with the embroidery machine, a design from John Deer. The Dipper and Pole Star above his head are embroidery. He has been echo quilted with navy blue thread, because there has to be enough quilting to hold the whole thing together when it is washed. 

As it's early days yet on the quilting,  there may be more added later on. We'll see how it looks.

Burlap ribbon color play for Thanksgiving

Hello, everyone.  It's Thanksgiving week in these USA and I was inspired to try some things.

Color Play in the dining room:

The runner was a Sewing Club project from way back, using fusible to applique the scrappy pumpkins. The ribbons (from Walmart crafts department,  I had dropped in to get Thanksgiving paper napkins and hit the crafts aisles on spec) are different widths and were cut to an appropriate length by eye.

Color Play at the breakfast nook:

The same ribbons,  draped on the light fixture. Note that the ribbons are not in contact with anything electric. The runner, which actually fits the 60 inch long table, has moved over also.

Yes that is the Spanish IGN map of all of the Caminos de Santiago on the wall. It's easy to refer to it , now that it's framed, when talking about routes or just daydreaming. 

Since there is still some burlap ribbon on the spools, I think there will be some burlap accents added to various small projects. 

To all of my American readers, I wish a happy and blessed Thanksgiving. To all of my readers, as the season of Advent is approaching fast, may you have a wondrous Advent and Christmas season.

Another project done

Hello, everyone. I know this is a boring title, but am at a loss for anything cute to say about this project. 

At sewing club this month we worked on reading pillows. These are a combination of art pillow to lean on and a pocket to put a book into. Generally people like to decorate them with cute pictures and sayings.

Here's a dinosaur telling us how great books are.

For me this involved trying out a new skill. The dinosaur design is actually designed for a smaller pillow. Our club was doing 18" pillows for this. In addition,  the largest size was just a little too wide for the length of my longest embroidery hoop. So I used the multi hooping abilities of my software to split the dinosaur pocket design into 2 smaller, overlapping hoopings. This after a little fiddling seemed to be going okay. The software created file 1 and file 2.

I started out with file 1. Oops. Should have started with file 2. File 1 creates letters inside the conversation bubble in front of the dinosaur.  File 2 creates the applique conversation bubble for those, and other, letters. Having done file 1 first, I went with having all of the letters appearing on the background fabric. 

Lesson learned: look carefully to see if it matters what order the files sewing out in.

I think the dinosaur is cute anyway, even if the gray swirls are showing through the letters.