A Quilter's Hands

I'm glad I gave myself a manicure on Sunday!

We had another quilt along on Wednesday.  I was asked for some closeups of our stitching  and we had Siouxsie at the last quilt along and she is our resident professional photographer!  She taught me how to take closeups and took several pictures with my camera!  After looking at the pictures, I wrote a poem about a quilter's hands.

Miss Debra has been quilting for a very long time.

Her stitches are perfect!

She has trouble seeing and these are here tools to see!  A thread guide and a magnifying glass.

A Quilter’s Hands

What makes a quilter’s hands?

Are they a certain age?

Young, old, from a certain land?

A hand that sews?

A hand that works?

A hand that’s seen sorrow and woes?

A hand that is barren?

A hand that multiplies.

A hand that is caring?

God gave us our hands,

To serve Him,

In every land.

To nurture and care

To toil and serve.

As we tarry here.

God gave us our quilter’s hands,

To sew together our lives,

With fabric, tears and laughter,

Serving Him the best we can.

By Missy Shay

Abideth is seven and she wanted to sew a few stitches!

Abideth also worked on her mom's cross stitch!

Here are some closeups of the stitching.

These are mine and very crooked, but a lot better than when I started!

I try to stitch in the ditch so that no one can see my crooked stitches!

Joeann's stitches are perfect!

Siouxsie's stitches are very uniform, which is good!

 

We even got some pictures of stitching from the underside of the quilt!

Verity "helped" Siouxsie with her tangle!

Of course the best thing about the quilt alongs is the fellowship!

I really recommend getting together with friends to quilt, it is what threads our lives together!

To see how I played around with the poem to make it look nice, go here:  http://missyscakesandaprons.blogspot.com/2013/03/feline-friday_29.html

Have a great day!

Missy

February Finishes

I already showed ya'll my finish for this month, it was the pinwheel quilt.  I mailed it on Monday, so hopefully they received it either Wed. or Thur.

I love the back!

We are almost done with the Great Granny square quilt that we are hand quilting!

This week I finished another 11 strips for my scrappy trip around the world quilt.  This brings me to total of 46 strips and 21 finished blocks, which makes a total of 67, it was suggested to do only 81 blocks, so I have 14 more strips to make before I will finish all of my blocks!

I am pretty happy with my finished goals for the month!  My goal was to finish the quilting on the pinwheel quilt.  DONE  , sew as many sets of the scrappy trip along I could, I lost with how many I did this month, and my other goal was to try to finish the great granny square, but that was dependent on other people since it is not being kept at my house.  We made great progress on it!
I also started another quilt and made two barns!

Did you meet any of your goals for this month?

Missy
I am going to try to find a different Bible verse that has to do with finishes to go with my Finishes post each month, I thought that would be fun!

Acts 20:24  "But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God."

Dressmaker Special Sewing Machine

First, I finished the Pinwheel quilt and it is washed and ready to go!  We will mail it either Friday or Saturday!

The quilting looks so much better after it has been washed!

I love the back fabric.  Everything was donated for this quilt and I would like to thank everyone who helped make this quilt happen!  I'll be sure to post pics of Kenzie with the quilt after her grandmother sends them to me.  She gets her leg casts off in about a week.

I bought a new machine yesterday!  I couldn't help myself, it is so pretty!  It is an electric though!

 I have to rearrange my dining room again to be able to fit it in there.  I can't wait until I move and can have more room for my machines!

 It is called a Dressmaker Special, don't you love the delicate gold flowers?

 Here is the front of it.  It's a small machine.

 It was originally sold at Leonard's Department Store.  I wonder if that was a local store?

 I do not like the cabinet, it's pretty ugly.  I do not think it originally came with this cabinet because the machine is smaller than the hole.

Did I mention I only paid $35 for it?  It sewed through four layers of denim without any problems!!  The serial number is SA 36841.  If anyone has any information on these machine or know where I can find a manual, I would appreciate it.  So far, I have not been able to find anything on it.  I'll be making a denim/flannel rag quilt for my nephew and I think this would be a perfect machine for it!
I have three more machines I use, you can see them at the left hand of my blog.  I use my hand cranks for all of my piecing.  If you click on my Treadle Sewing Machine Tab you will see them also.  This is my post on the hand crank I use for my piecing. I enjoy using my hand cranks because they never "eat" my material like the new machines will sometimes, and they are very easy to fix!   I also have a newer Janome I use for my quilting and dress making.    Here is what my "sewing" room looks like!
I'll be linking this post with Tilted Quilt Meet My machine and other linky parties on my side bar.

Update:  I have found that my Dressmaker is "Most likely, it is just a 'clone' of a Singer 15.  The US Govt handed over the patent to Singer 15's to the Japanese after WWII, so that they could re-start their economy.  I have several versions of Japanese Singer 15 machines."  
And here is some information about Leonard's Department Store "Leonard Brothers was a local store.  In fact it was one of the largest department stores in Downtown Ft. Worth.  It was eventually bought out by Dillards.  If you remember a few years back Tandy had the subway downtown it was first started by Leonard Brothers to move passengers from the parking lot to the store downtown.  Yes a BIG prominent store in Ft. Worth"  
Isn't that an interesting piece of history?

What is your favorite machine to use?
Missy

Quilting Done!

I have finally finished the quilting on the pinwheel quilt!  I've trimmed it up, but I still need to cut the binding and sew it on.

 I've been quilting it off and on for the past few days.  Muffin thinks it is going to be his quilt.  He looks so comfortable!

 Every day he takes a nap on it.

After I finished it, Pippi had to model it for me!

As you can see, I tried fmq circles on it.  My first ones are pretty bad, but they got better as I went along.  I decided it needed some more quilting, I expect this quilt will be getting washed a lot so I wanted to make sure it lasted.  I went ahead and stitched in the ditch on all of the rows.
I quilted it in quadrants, can you see the difference as I went along?

I hope to get the binding done tonight because I'll be busy all day!  Then after I wash it I can get it in the mail and this goal will be finished!
How are you doing on your March goals?
Have a great day!
Missy

Happy Quilting Day!

Sew-cal Gal  is having a Sew-cial today in honor of national quilting day!  I had already planned on having a yard sale today, but I pulled the quilting frame outside and worked on our prayer quilt!

As you can see it was pretty sunny today!  81º in Texas!  I got my first sunburn of the year!  Can you see my dying mums behind me?  I kill all of my plants!
We were pretty steady until about mid morning.  The road leading to my road was closed off due to a Pickle parade!  Elsa was all ready to sell some stuff!

So I just continued working on my quilt!  All that work and all I made was $13, but I got a whole granny square quilted!

I had a lot of people stop and ask me all kinds of questions!  One lady asked me about repairing a quilt.  That's a scary thought trying to fix somebody's loved on old quilt!
I took a bunch of stuff to the mission to donate and look what I found!

Someone put a lot of work into that pillow and will go perfect with the colors in my scrappy trip along quilt!
I'm so excited!

Yesterday I had a quilt along at my house, you can see that post here:
http://missyscakesandaprons.blogspot.com/2013/03/feline-friday_15.html

Okay, in honor of sew-cial event, let me tell you about what kind of quilts I like. I love scrappy quilts, but I also love two toned and three toned quilts although I haven't really made one before.
I love vintage patterns and vintage quilts.  Here is an idea of some quilts I like, Pippi is going to model them for you!

She's sleeping on a bow tie quilt I picked up at a yard sale with the quilt behind it for $5!  The purple quilt is a double wedding quilt I picked up at a thrift store for a couple of dollars and the quilt to the left is a quilt from my grandmother.  I would love to make all of the vintage patterns!  So far I've made the Dresden plate. postage stamp and great granny square. I am working on a hexagon quilt, but that is a slow process!  I want to make baskets, bouquets, and more!  I am currently looking for a pattern for the basket block that is a cactus basket?  But I want it 10-12 inches since it is for a king size quilt for my sister.
Tonight I am going to finish quilting the pinwheel quilt.
Don't forget to drop in at the sew-cail!

What are you up to today?
Missy

I Chronicles 16:10 " Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the LORD.
11  Seek the LORD and his strength, seek his face continually.
12  Remember his marvellous works that he hath done, his wonders, and the judgments of his mouth;"

Feline Friday

 We had quilt along at my house today.  Pippi was her usual help, she always has to be in the middle of all of the action!

 We are still trying to get this quilt quilted!  It is a very slow process!

We had four people come today, Me, Siouxsie, Marie and Lynn.  Well, ten if you count the cats.  See, Tiger is ready to help!

Pippi was pooped after everyone left.  She decided to work on her tan.  It's in the 80's today here in TX!

I made a pineapple casserole for lunch.  Everyone kind of looked at me funny,  until they tried it!  Here's the recipe, it is very good!
I'm having a yard sale tomorrow.  I hate having yard sales, although I love to shop them!
Tomorrow is national quilting day and this weekend only  you can watch free quilting videos here at the Quilt Show.  Boy do I wish I had more time to watch them!
Have a great weekend ya'll!
Missy