[QUOTE=Shirley Ujest]
WOW. You’re first quilt is full of awesomeness!
My MIL is a master seamstress. Like Edward Scissorhands with material. (Though her ability to actually pick material that isn’t on sale or covered in novelty prints is impossible.) She invested in a serger ( loves it) and upgraded her trusty old singer that she first bought when she came to the US with some newer model.
The newer model constantly gives her problems. The 40 year old model, though slower, has never given her a minutes problem in all these years.
It also helps that when she was a child in Germany, because her mom was a single mom ( divorced) and there was no one to help her with her daughter, my MIL went to work at the shoe factory with her mom every day after school. By the time she was 10 she was working a machine and learned how to break them down, completely clean and oil them and put it back together.
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Thanks, for the kindness - the recipient is very happy with it too. As I said before, all I see are wrinkles, bad corners and where I had to keep changing the pattern because I’d underestimated how much material it would take.
My mum’s machine is a Singer too! Good old Singer. I have a 1930’s (working) black and gold electric Singer that I keep for show, but I might drag it out and use that instead of the ‘better’ machine.
Mum bought her Singer in 1964 and paid it off by sewing clothes for women in her apartment block. By the time I was born, she was an expert. We just found out (at her funeral) that one of my great aunts used to sew the display pieces for several fashion houses in Melbourne.
I love looking at the beadwork and emroidery that are showing up here, conurepete’s anklet is stunning.
Auntie Pam, here’s a quick rundown.
I start by working out the pattern - I’ll do the boxes one for a friend as the classic optical illusion, but the same frame could end up as zig-zags or stars dependng on the fill colours used in the diamonds.
next I do the standard template and basting. The last template in the row has the lines where it will fold. Right sides together, I’ll sew across seam one, then fold the striped piece against itself so that the new piece is RSfacing the black piece and sew along seam two. The next piece will fit on seam 3 and so on, making up a row of flowers on a black backing, that then gets sewn onto this.
Counting up, it’s only 930 pieces so far, but I’ve got another 70 in that line in the previous pic ready to go on. It’s going to be hard getting back to this after the lovely quick (only 9 weeks) baby’s quilt.
Did you have to do a Y seam? Those scare me too.
