The Singer Featherweight Shop in Idaho has an auction the first Tuesday of each month. They generally have about 12 different featherweight machines that have been fully restored. The auction opens at eight and the bidding is fierce. They sell out in about 5 minutes. In September I did my first bidding on the site, rather than just watching the auction. My eye was on a featherweight 222k – the free arm version of the featherweights. To my joy and amazement, I actually won the machine I wanted first try! Here is my sweet beauty……
Currently designing 3 large stockings – 18” wide by 24” long. The fronts have nameplates where the stockings can have a customized name added. The front and backs have batting and the back is also quilted. I have also created 3 different designs to embroider on the stocking fronts.
Why from Month 08 to Month 10? Well someplace in the middle of Month 09 I lost track of the months we were working on. So I will need to loop back and finish the Month 09 project. For Month 10 the goal was creating an appliqué house with digitizing. This is our official last class for the course – though we are hoping Sarah will offer an advanced class. In Month 10, in addition to our monthly project, we are also working on a special project to give back to our community. I have started my house but put it on hold until we finish our community project.
Month 08 was all about digitizing spirals. The hardest part was knowing how to group as one builds the various examples. Not doing this created issues with combining shapes with unexpected results. The other piece was knowing to use ‘radius’ rather than ‘diameter’ when segmenting the circle. Anytime there are an odd number of segments always use ‘radius’. This month our product was documenting the process to create a bank of spirals.
July felt like a month where we really were demonstrating our cumulative learning. I gave myself grace for July. I started the month – July 1 with an emergency room trip. By Sunday, July 3, I went into surgery for an unexpected/anticipated ‘pacemaker’! I just finished myt 6 week mark.
I decided to focus on ‘Christmas’ for this project because I believe in eternal, love, joy, hope, and peace. My goal is to make this design a medallion center surrounded by 12 blocks reflecting the twelve days of Christmas. Most of my hooping for this project uses my 272mm x 408mm hoop. The only exception is my center design that uses my 200mm x 200mm hoop. I created 3 versions before I got the design placed successfully, including breaking my outer ribbon for July’s design. I ended up with 7 hoopings to stitch out, excluding the quilting.
Below are pictures of my first version, including cutting the applique. For the second version of the design, I tested the stitching without using my applique. For this test I used the ‘knife’ tool to ‘split’ the outer ribbon. It was much closer than my first stitch out but you can still see the ribbon has not fully lined up correctly. As I stitched this one, I revised the design a third time for my final version.
For the third design, to break the ribbon, I created a circle 22.5” in diameter. Next, I used the ‘12’ and ‘3’ clock positions and digitized an open shape, tracing along the curve from “12” to “3”. Next, I zoomed in and ‘reshaped’ the curve to match the 22.5” circle. Then, using the ‘circle layout’ tool, I replicated 3 times. Finally, I zoomed in to make sure the 4 arcs were laying on top of the solid ring. Finally, I was able to delete the initial 22.5” circle and changed the ‘4 arcs’ stitch type from single stitch to ‘single motif’. Below are images of my final design files, the applique cut using my ScanNCut SDX330D, stitchout test1, amd stitchout test2.
June was challenging for many reasons beyond class. I am happy to have been able to create the assignments. I will need to continue cleaning up and moving my connectors for a more continuous design. I am a longarm quilter and want to be able to create continuous motifs. I have one I created that includes freehand connector lines/swirls. I am hoping to adjust so I end up with one continuous design.
My hubby brought home a Singer 404 recently that I just finished restoring. This machine has a slant shank, is gear driven, has an internal motor, internal light, straight stitch with reverse, along with a bed that is 16.5″ wide x 7″ deep. There is a flip-up bobbin winder on the vertical portion of the arm of the machine just under the handwheel. It has a drop in class 66 bobbin in front of needle position accessible by a slide plate. The machine threads front to back. The thread cutter, rather than a separate metal part, is built into the back of the presser bar. This machine also has a rounded throat plate which raises instead of having feed dogs which lower. The machine has a tan color while the top and handwheel are on the machine cream.
The motor for this machine had a cracked casing. I was able to replace the motor with a fully serviced replacement. It runs and sews beautifully!
Month 5 of our Digitizing Master Class was all about color. I am not a big ’stash’ collector, so my scraps are prepared for specific projects. A lover of batiks, I had slowly been collecting batik scraps that I cut into 2.5″ squares, saving them in small snap containers. After I finished my Month 05 lessons, I had about a week’s worth of time before the next class. Inspired by our color lessons, I decided it was time to make my batik quilt.
This was also a great project for using my vintage Featherweight. To make quick work of piecing, I used quilter’s 2.5” fusible grid interfacing. I created 20 blocks in total with about 7 different combinations. Each of the large blocks contain 7 x 7 blocks of the 2.5” squares for a total of 980 squares.
For my sashing and first border, I chose a golden yellow batik because it feels like being surrounded by sunshine. To join the blocks in each row I cut 15 14.5” x 1.5” sashing strips. To join each of the rows, the top border strip, and the bottom border strip, I prepared 6 59” x 1.5” pieces. For the right and left side borders, I prepared 2 pieces 76” x 1.5” long.
Next I added the outer border strip. I chose to use ‘teal’ because I love water and it grounds me. I prepared 2 side borders, 76” x 6.5”, and 2 top/bottom borders each 88.5” x 6.5”.
After the top was pieced, I mounted it onto my longarm for quilting. I chose a teal and purple batik for the backing and a purple ombre batik for the binding. I chose purple because it feels like passion. For the quilting I chose a butterfly swirl panto motif designed by Anne Bright.
Have month 09 of ”Simply Dreaming”, by Sarah Vedeler, laid out to begin embroidering. This is the last month of blocks. The last 3 months will be quilting and assembling.
This month we focused on color. In Corel Draw, we learned to create a color wheel, how to assign color to the color wheel. We also learned how to download fabric manufacturer’s bitmaps of their fabrics. This provides the ability to then build a color wheel of fabrics for projects. I was able to download several of my favorite fabrics for inventory.
We learned about color values: pure, secondary, and tertiary. We also learned about color tone, tint, and shade that is created by adding values of black and white to pure colors. Next we learned about color schemes such as: monochromatic, analogous, complementary, and split complementary.
Below are my Color Wheels created in Corel Draw, along with my ‘stash’ fabric. I am not a big fabric stash collector, mostly so I don’t overwhelm myself. I have enjoyed working with the color wheel. I found doing the exercises really helped to understand the ‘digital equivalents’ of the various colors.
I really enjoyed putting together the various schemes with fabrics and threads. It provided me the opportunity to record fabric and thread colors I can use on my future projects
meditativesewing.com 