Design Wall Monday, June 17, 2013

I took the suggestions of others and added a narrow (.5") stop border of green before adding the black outer border. By adding the two borders the size is now 59.5" x 79". It worked quite well. Thank you all! It is now folded and hung on a hanger with the other tops waiting to be quilted.

I made a fast trip to South Dakota last week to pick up this beauty. On the way home, I raced ahead of two rain storms as I did not want to get the tables to get wet in the back of the truck even though they were wrapped with the tarp. This baby, of course, rode inside the cab.

It was set up on Saturday and on Sunday I started playing with it. I began by doing the most basic things: winding bobbins and threading the machine. Then I intentionally messed up the tension so that I could learn to get good tension. As of this writing, I haven't achieved it yet, but I had to stop yesterday to do the housewifey things. *smile*

Along the way, I visited the Crazy Horse Memorial, Mt. Rushmore and then made a side trip to Devil's Tower, Wyoming.

Crazy Horse Memorial. The head that you see here is 87.5 feet high. The horse's head will be 219 feet high. This will be the world's largest mountain carving. The hole is the beginning of the negative space between his arm and the horse's neck.

Mt. Rushmore is, always, Mt. Rushmore. It was crowded with people from all over the world. Each face is 60 feet tall and each eye is 11 feet wide. There is a section of quartz under George Washington's left eye close to his nose that reminded me of a teardrop. Just my fanciful imagination.

The Devil's Tower was impressive. It rises 1,267 feet above the Belle Fourche River. It is a sacred site for many native peoples and I saw evidence of this by the many prayer bundles tied into the trees along the trails. I sat on the tailgate of the truck for several hours watching the three rock climbers: two descending and the third ascending. The third one made it to the top!


For other design walls, please visit Judy at Patchwork Times.

Practice, Practice

JudyL's (Patchwork Times) method of machine stitching binding onto a quilt has fascinated me. BUT. I don't ever, ever sew over pins with my Bernina 'cause if you hit one the results are not nice. What to do? I uncovered and dusted off (literally!) the old Singer treadle sewing machine.

I love this machine. It makes such a perfect, beautiful straight stitch. And if I sew over and accidentally hit a pin, the workings of the machine are simple and easy to get to so even I can fix it. There are a few rules of engagement, though, when working with a treadle.

1. Use a straight legged chair. No office chairs with rollers. That is, unless you just want to roll around and not really sew *smile*.
2. Wear shoes. Preferably athletic shoes, because the sole sticks just a bit to the treadle.

So here I was, treadling away on the bindings of two different small quilts. On the first one, I put the pins too far apart and pinned from the top side. Not good. I found out that pinning closer together is a key point in this technique, so on the second quilt I pinned about every inch. I also found that if I pinned from the back side the whole thing laid flatter on the machine bed. On the first quilt, there were a lot of places where I veered off the binding on the back which resulted in having to go back in and hand stitch it down in places. On the second quilt, the closer pinning worked and there were fewer 'skips'. But there are still issues with the second quilt.

This is just going to be a matter of practice. Lots of practice.