Yesterday, I bought myself a new sewing machine. My old machines were 25 and 30 years old, and my Brother had never sewn very well. My new machine is a Bernina Bernette 90e, and it sews like a dream. It doesn’t have any alphabets, it doesn’t sew elaborate embroidery designs, but it’s a good basic machine. I did some darning of weak areas on jeans, repaired a few seams here and there, and then my husband was told that his niece had FINALLY had her baby. I had picked up a pack of of precut fabric squares, about 4.5 inches each, and had planned on using them in a cathedral window quilt. I already have the muslin. However, I figured that I’d try making a simple pieced quilt for the baby gift.
It is VERY, VERY easy to sew up those precut fabric squares. I don’t have to cut them, I just have to slap two squares right side together and ZIP ZIP ZIP, I had sewn a string of doubles together. To the ironing board! Then I sewed the doubles into strips of four, and then eight, and then I sewed the long sides together, and I have about a quarter to a third of a quilt top. And I’m out of appropriate fabric! I have to get to the shop first thing tomorrow and get three more packs of those squares. And quilt backing. I’m thinking of flannel. This is addicting. I have batting.
I wonder if I missed any clothes that need repair?
Nine and a half hours before the fabric shop opens. If y’all never see me again, you’ll know why.
Heh. I know that feeling. I love those cut squares, and made a gorgeous quilt last year with some of them. Hope your Bernette lasts; mine never did work right from the beginning and I eventually traded up. Happy sewing!
GusNSpot bought me a simple machine.
Apparently it isn’t as simple as I am.
But, there’s mending to do, and dish towels to hem, and *OOOhhh, wouldn’t that fabic on the dollar table at **-Mart look great made into a _____? Besides the stuff and things I need to work on for our Santa & Mrs. outfits.
I have fabric. Half an armoire full of fabric. Still needing sewn.
:::checks yellow pages for a place to get squares:::
If you can’t wait the nine hours, you can always cut up some old sheets or even recycle some old clothes.
You must be new to the sewing game. I can’t even imagine not having fabric around. I always thought that the motto: “she who dies with the most fabric wins” said it all.
Congrats on the new sewing machine! It sounds like loads of fun.
I’ve lost 75 pounds, and this machine was my reward to myself. I’ve sewn off and on for about 40 years, it’s just that for the past 15 years or so I’ve been fighting with my Brother machine and sewing wasn’t fun. This Bernette is soooo easy to use, it has an automatic threader (good thing, too, my eyes aren’t as sharp as they used to be). I have other fabric, it’s just not the RIGHT fabric for this particular project. I guess I can cut up some more muslin for the cathedral window quilt, I’d just like to get this baby quilt done FIRST. I wasn’t planning on doing this baby quilt, I didn’t even know that my husband’s niece was pregnant. It’s hard to keep track of all the pregnancies in that family. I suppose I should just make up a stock of baby quilts and knitted blankies to keep on hand.
But, but, but…they NEED some clothes! And they say they need a nice cozy quilt of their own! They highly approve of the sewing machine box, of course, and have put in a request for a quilt in it. Or a knitted blanket. They don’t care. They LOOOOOVE knitted blankies, and are always quite put out when I give away my latest projects. We have a few fleece blankets on top of a few low bookshelves, which are reserved for the cats’ use. This is because the cats will knock off anything on the bookshelves that are not blankets or cushions.
lo bob! you have fabric?
yes!
me like fabric!
yes!
fabric is goooood!
mmmmmm! fabric
mmmmmm!
fabric.
fabric. fabric. fabric. fabric. fabric. fabric. fabric.
mmmmmm! fabric
FABRIC!!!
ow.
when come back bring fabric.
Yes… I ran out and watched Weebl and Bob… again… :o
I decided that one section of the quilt was not good enough. So I ripped out some of the seams and sewed them up more accurately. Now they match very nicely.
I probably need help. Two more hours til the shop opens. WHY must the shop be open in the daytime, instead of at night, which is when I am awake?
Don’t forget to wash and dry the heck out of that flannel back, if it’s being combined with a regular cotton top!
MMMM, fabric. I’ve bought enough to keep me in quilting projects for the next couple of seasons but that won’t stop me from thinking about going back to the store. It’s the one store where I feel comfortable shopping and like I know what I am doing!
My parents gave me this Olivia medley for Christmas so in the back of my mind I think about a fun pattern–unlike most projects this one will stay with me!
I too am machine-piecing a top and since I usually hand-piece and I am terribly uncoordinated with the machine, it’s a study in imperfection. Almost no corners meet, and I am learning to live with it. The fabrics are still beautiful and if I keep it for myself I know my shame won’t be revealed. Even at the guild show-and-tell it’s at a distance so they can’t critique me
Then, my mom will win. My folks used to have a formal dining room. It is now floor to ceiling, wall to wall and side to side fabric. The rest of the house is littered with bags of clothes that could someday be ‘pieces’. She has 2 sewing machines and a serger, somewhere in there.
Is this some kind of sickness sewers, I mean *craft artists * get? The place is a crazy fire hazard.
I have 1 machine and 1 box of fabric, unopened for months now.
I just took my Singer out of storage to sew up a liner for a knitted purse I made and now I have the itch to do some serious sewing, too. There’s something very satisfying about it!
I know some quilters who go nuts unless they have several projects going in different stages – cutting, sewing, and quilting. I don’t have enough room for that, but there’s usually something being quilted and a top in progress.
There’s a new quilt shop fairly close to me, and the women who work there are so helpful. I’m doing a block-of-the-month, and whined that my points don’t always match. Margie asked if I was using a quarter-inch presser foot. I thought I was, but she showed me the feet they use, and they’re not like mine at all. Theirs has a flippy-thing that “moves” if the fabric touches it, sorta like an alarm. She’s going to order one for me.
I’ve recently discovered Thangles for making half-square triangles and am in heaven.
A friend’s mom is making a cathedral windows quilt. I didn’t know that those quilts don’t need batting and backing. She says when the top is done, the quilt is done. How cool is that?
I barely even sew and I have seven underbed storage boxes full of fabric, not to mention boxes upon boxes of trims, notions, buttons and what-have-you.
I’m a professional crafter, and the sickness extends to everything - papercraft, fibercraft, polymer clay, jewelry-making, soap-making. I have craft stuff EVERYWHERE. My husband claims that I am not a crafter at all, I am merely a hoarder of craft supplies.
Hah. I have had my machine for a year and I have three boxes of fabric. This is after I moved and got rid of some of it. And this thread is making me want to get into it again. I think I may even start a new thread!
Can I interrupt this thread to attempt to direct your sewing glee towards A Good Cause (not to mention give everyone else an idea for what to do with all their fabric!)?
Call up your local hospital and see if they need any isolette covers. They’re specially shaped quilt-like things that have appropriately spaced slots for cords and access ports that cover the isolettes in the NICU so the preemies can sleep and develop better in dark and quiet. Our NICU, one of the best in the country with nearly 500 patients a year, had only 3 isolette covers when WhyBaby was there. The rest, the nurses tried to make do with quilts and tape, but they really loved the isolette covers best.
They’re easy to make, and they make such a difference. And right now heavy winter fabrics (which block light and sound the best) are on clearance tables!
Pretty much. I went to a fabric store where nothing really grabbed me and I still spent $90. Partly because they had a robust clearance section!!
My mom has done the kind where you make and quilt each block separately and then connect them. So intense tussling to get the quilt together but then no overall quilting.
I usually try to power through one project at a time but lately there have been a few babies popping up so I’m in various stages of a few infant/toddler ones.
Yeah, I have a lot of fabric. But I always have to buy more!*
Right now I’m finishing two dresses, which I am very excited about, and after that will continue the baby quilt (in soft batiks) which is sitting around in pieces. It’s all cut out and two blocks finished, but the rest is just sitting on the ironing board, waiting. I also got 3 yards of Thomas the Tank Engine fabric for $6 and took a day last week to turn it into a playmat/quilt–my 3-yo is far more thrilled about it than she is about the scrappy star quilt I made for her bed that took ages!
And I have a million quilt ideas in my head, and clothing too. There’s not enough time in the world to do everything I would like to, and yet I keep getting patterns (though I’ve gotten much more picky and only buy ones I love). The other day, I was waffling over a pattern for fabric-covered foam blocks for a baby/toddler–so cute, but would I really ever make them? The two other ladies there cracked up when I said that, because of course they are always buying patterns and fabric like that too.
*Explanation for those not familiar with fabric-mania–part of the reason that we buy so much fabric is that the lines have become much more like the fashion world; new fabric lines come out every few months and then disappear. If you love something you see, you had better buy it, because you might not see it again. Also there’s the fact that fabric is exactly like candy, only better, because you never get sick (or fat) from having too much–just poor.
