Singer 99 is Dressed to the 9’s

Dressed to the 9’s!

In the weeks that followed my Singer 99 conversion, I accessorized a bit, then I took her to an all day sew. I usually bring a couple other machines with me, but I only used Joy that day. I marveled at her true portability, as I churned along. At first, I found myself looking under the table for the foot pedal, and laughed at myself. Once, I found my legs crossed, and told my friend, “Hey look! My legs are crossed! Can you do that?” and she mildly, said “no” Then she lit up and said “Oh my goodness! The light just turned on. That is truly a portable machine!” I smiled and said “I know, right? I can take her to the park and just sit and sew.”
Now, she wants one.
At that time I had only made a dust cover, accessory bag, and piecing tool caddy, with padded bottom [possible coffee cup mat] built in pin cushion, scissor pocket, and small pockets for tweezers, 6″ ruler, and poky stick.

 

Pretty cool stuff, considering I wanted to be able to carry her outside and have everything I need to begin sewing.
but then I went full out batpoop crazy, and made a custom Pack-n-Play for her!
I finished in time to take her for a test run at my local quilt shop aply named “Sew Crazy”

The hooks were added because I accidently ironed over the nylon webbing while pressing the panel on, and got some black goo on the red panel. After thinking about remaking the panel for a tenth of a millisecond, I decided to hide the marks with hanging hardware! I don’t know if I will ever need to hang anything here, but no one has to know that I didn’t intend to have them.

Please notice the position of the word “Singer” in the appliques.

 

I did not want a bag that I would have to lift her out of to sew, so I made sides that drop down.

Beauty unfolding!

I ran out of velcro for the side pocket flaps. I don’t have any idea what I will put in these pockets, but you can’t add them later, so here they are.

 

In case you can’t tell just how much I obsessed over this, here are the features:

The end pieces contain pockets with print matched flaps on the inside [of course], and print matched sleeves on the outside for the webbing straps to go through because I do NOT like spending $12 /yard for fabric and then having black straps run across the top of  it.

The front drops down, and is made to hang over the table. It has 3 pockets with a print matched flap. The flap is held closed with velcro, because these pockets will be upside down when she is all packed up.

The back is designed to hold patterns, paperback books, or quilt blocks, and also has a print matched flap. This flap also has a velcro closure, but will be right side up, when she is all packed up.

Then we have a shape matched bag for threads, bobbins, and portable battery operated light. I designed this to fit the exact shape of her throat where it will travel with her. I used an invisable [teeth covered] zipper so as not to scratch her when I slide it in place.

Then I needed a way to have the tools I always use handy, so I made this tool cozy with pin cushion, scissor pocket, and little pockets for a ruler, tweezers, and poky sticks.

[See those little red scissors? They are made by Fiskars, and cut thread really well. They only cost $1.49! Look for them in the school supplies [not sewing] section next to the crayons. I buy them in colors to match every sewing machine I have.]

There is a flap on the back to put her foot down on, and hold it in place for travel.

More velcro to hold her secure.

The front has her name in fussy cut applique.
The back as an outline of her in fussy cut applique, from a template I made.

If I learned one thing from this, it’s that the ‘stick on’ velcro sucks!!!! If you have any,  throw it away! Now!

Really!

I’ll wait . . . . .

Is it gone?

Ok, good.

So what will you use to hold the velcro in place while you sew it?

Something that will make it stick where you want it, but also be able to sew over it without gumming up your needle?

Temporary basting spray! Yep!

Here are the rest of my tips for sewing velcro:

Use a walking foot! I was lazy, and left my walking foot on, and it worked better than any of my past velcro sewing experiences! Skipped stitches anyone? Not with the walking foot. I’m telling you, it was awesome.

Cut the pieces to fit before spraying them. Then lay down the ones you will sew first, because you don’t want the pieces in waiting to get too dry. I used freezer paper for any overspray.  Spray them, then place on fabric, finger press, and sew them down.

Next, spray your matching pieces, and lightly place on top of the sewn ones.

Then carefully close the flap, and if it looks good, press with your hand.

Next, carefully lift the flap, using your finger tips to seperate the pieces so the unsewn ones stay stuck to the fabric. Now, you are ready to sew those down.

I had so much fun, I may velcro EVERYTHING!

um, as soon as I get some more.

That’s it for this week! I am off to work on another quilt now.

#DressedToTheNines #PrintMatchObession #PackNPlay  #SewingWithVelcro

 

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Finished! Circle Bag for Rotating mat

I have at least 2 recent quilts finished, but took a break to finish up some other stuff. My job gets a bit busy in the summer, so I wanted to organise, before it gets too out of hand. What better way to organise than to finish up some abandoned projects?

Then my computer crashed a couple of times, and I decided it was time for a new hard drive. When I removed the old ones [yes, I had 3 drives stuffed in there] they were dated 2006, 2008, and 2011, so I guess it was just time.  Sew while windoze was loading, and updating, and updating, and updating . . . I cleaned, and sewed.

The first one was this bag. Way back when, I made a bag for my rotating cutting mat, but didn’t like the zipper.  I removed it, [Rip As You Go?], but did nothing else to it , until it taunted me into submission. Or maybe hubby wanted his office chair back. Anyway, it’s done!

I am sew loving this 22″ long double zipper!

A couple notes on how I did it:

I measured the mat, then added 1 1/2″ to the diameter. That makes 15 1/2 so I made a circle that big, and used it for my template. Then I quilted the pieces to some heavy interfacing. Same for pockets, except I made a cut out, trimmed with bias binding to finish. I added the handles to the bag inside the pockets to hide the attachment.

I installed the zipper into 4 strips 2 /12″ wide and about 2″  longer than the zipper.  This zipper panel turned out to be 5″ wide. I added heavy interfacing and quilted it, too.

Then I took the diameter of the quilted circles, subtracted 1″ for the two 1/2″ seam allowances, and used Pie [3.14] to get the circumference which was just under 48″. After that, I made the last panel the same width as the one containing the zipper, and added it to make the circle measure 48″ I used a ton of pins to attach my ring, one side at a time.

A large outside pocket on each side, and one on the inside.

• Looks like it’s sticking it’s tongue out at us, doesn’t it?

It holds the mat, and quite a few tools.

and of course it matches my Featherweight tote.

 

#CircleBag #RotatingMat

New Bed Mate – Diagonal stitching on a Rocketeer

It’s not what you think!!!!!

I love my husband dearly.

It’s about my new diagonal stitch guide set up!

How many HSTs do you supose you make in a year?
When you consider every snowball [aka “stitch and flip”], plus every binding you do is the same corner to corner technique, it adds up to a lot.

Now, I realize many people have only one [gasp] sewing machine, but I have been blessed to find quite a few. Which is great because having a Butterfly brain, I often flit from project to project. Mostly because some projects get moved up into the que due to some event – like babies. Yeah, lets blame other people!

With my last project, I decided I needed a better diagonal seam sewing set up.

I tried to “finger press” a fold to follow, [unsuccessfully] but I ended up just drawing the line corner to corner. Then I decided I didn’t want to waste all those corners, so I sewed a 1/2″ away. You can see where I had to draw another line 1/2″ away from the first line of stitches. I use disappearing ink, so I have to sew quickly. This is probably why so many people toss these corners after clipping them.

Since my Rocketeer was handy, and I’d been doing my binding on it for awhile now, I decided to use that.  It’s really too awesome of a machine to completely dedicate it to such a menial task, plus having a top loading bobbin, I needed a way to make it removable, that wouldn’t take a bunch of time to set back up.
I already had “The Angler II” but it hangs over the bed of the machine, and you need to use the “key” to align the needle every time you place it on the bed. The bobbin lies under it, so we know what’s going to happen, right?
If I had the kind of patience required to line up the needle every time I changed the bobbin, I could just draw lines on every single piece I wanted to sew like everybody else.
but I am not like everybody else. When I get bored, I start thinking about ways to make my tasks simpler, or at least easier.

I got some cardboard, and traced around the bed. I included the back for more space for the pieces to land, and to make it a tight fit, so I wouldn’t have to line the needle up each time I used it. I then placed The Angler on the bed, and measured how far I wanted my Bed-Mate to extend, and gave that template to my wonderful husband. I can make stuff with wood, and have for years, but in my experience, men like to feel useful and loved, so I “let” him make me stuff.

After he made it, I used the key to line up the needle, and taped The Angler down with painters tape.

and you know what?

It’s as wonderful as I thought it would be!

Even sewing binding is easier.

When I ran out of bobbin thread, I simply removed the Bed-Mate by sliding it out, filled the bobbin, slid the Bed-Mate back into place, and alakazam! Back to sewing! Just like magic!

Not only does The Angler have diagonal stitch lines, it has 1/4 stitch lines on each side of the needle!
I added pink glo tape to get a half inch mark, for sewing the other side of Snowballs, and get some FREE HST’s.

The first project, and inspiration for this, was a lot of snoballs, and even though these were only made from 2.5 squares, I had to test it, I stitched another line a half inch away, and made tiny HST’s!

Really tiny HST’s

So tiny that I bought the 1.5 Bloc-Loc for them.

Cuz if you think I’m gonna try to line up the seams to trim all those tiny squares, . . . then it’s like you don’t know me at all!

Now what am I gonna do with all those tiny HST’s?

Well . . . another problem I seam to have is that I go to these all-day-sew events every couple of months. I love looking at other peoples projects, machines, fabrics, all of it.
but . . . I never know what to bring with me to sew. I often think as I go, sewing a bit, standing back and looking at it, stopping to do some figuring, having a look-see at my stash, check out my quilty friends on facebook, ect. All of which, I secretly fear would make me look like a lunatic to the other ladies at the sew-in. I need a project that is portable, and planned out, or at least that doesn’t require thinking.

I may have just the thing!

 

#Bedmate #TinyHSTs #WhatToDoWithTinyTriangles #Rocketeer #Singer500