2 Purple Purses

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Kim

Here are the two purple purses I made for the two girls that I carpool to school every day. They were belated Christmas gifts since my machine was acting up when I went to make them. I also made a matching lanyard since they have to wear one every day with their school id on it.

Excuse the quality of the photos, I took these with my iphone when the purses were done to send to a friend via text. I took others with the good camera before I gave them to the girls yesterday and the card protested and wouldn’t read. It looked all scratched up so I decided to trash the disk so I wouldn’t accidentally put it in my camera again – no telling what I lost on it – but it won’t happen again!

Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Kim

That is Hawaiian for Happy New Year!

My sewing machine is having a “spa treatment” (aka being serviced to make it to its best). A part in the bobbin area broke. The tension was WAY off and it was not sewing very well at all.

It is a Janome 6500. I want to name it. I have had it a while, but since she is going to be my travel machine only in a few months, I feel I owe it to her. She has been through a lot. She has been faithful to me. She keeps on ticking after the beating she has gotten (a cracked screen because my daughter sat on my case when she was in it). I snapped off a spool holder when I had left a cone of thread on it when I put it in the case. So she needs a name that is a strong name. Something that has character! Any ideas?

Yep, you probably guessed it, I will be getting a new machine in February. My big surprise from “Santa” was permission to buy a new machine when our tax refund gets here. I will be getting a Janome 6600. Why not a Horizon, you ask?

Well, many reasons. If I had known when I was buying my 6500 that the 6600 was coming out, I would have waited a bit. Secondly, I have all the accessories (case, sew-ezi table, etc) that fit the 6500 and the 6600 is the same size and shape as the 6500 so I don’t have to go buying more stuff to fit it. Lastly, the price difference between the 6600 and the horizon is just too much. I can’t wait until I am able to go down and get it!

My Project Shelves

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Kim

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Here you can see what most of one of my walls in my sewing area looks like. My chair is in the way, but most of that behind there belongs to guild-related storage, so It is not interesting anyway.

So here we go with an explanation.

On the top of the shelf from left to right: bagged batting, some junk, my daughters Barbie sewing machine (the pink box), and my 10 or so quilts that I cut out batting for (from my big roll) – two of these have ben sandwiched. I need to buy more safety pins so that I can have more sandwiched at a time. Right now, though, my machine is skipping stitches when I free-motion quilt, so quilting them will have to wait…. again….

To the left of the two drawers in the center is my miscellaneous tools. The wicker basket holds my packaged patterns. The two stacked containers is my safety pins and my Marti Michell templates.

The two drawers holds my precuts; my jelly rolls, honey buns, fat quarters, and charm squares. Above the drawers is various binders that I really need to go through and see if I want them any more. Below you see three shelves with vertical stacking – those are my quilting books. The one shelf with horizontal stacking is my quilting magazines. Trust me when I say I have already gone through them recently – I got rid of about 30 books and about 75 magazines. They now fit in the space allotted.

To the right of the two drawers there is four rows of Really Useful Boxes. These are my projects that have been started all nice and neat. My daughter even has one of these boxes for her stuff so that it is contained.

Below the boxes is a row with my tops to be quilted. These have not had batting cut for them yet.

The bottom row of green storage contains most of my dyeing supplies. To the right, the big green container holds my larger supplies. The cabinet below holds miscellaneous paperwork/supplies that don’t really get used much. In front you will see the Tutto bag my husband bought me for our anniversary this year.

It still needs a bit of work, but since we are only going to be here in Hawaii for about 19 more months, I won’t be doing too much more to it other than culling for our upcoming move.

Rebekah’s Fancy

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Kim

My neighbor Rebekah moved this past weekend back to the mainland. In addition to being an awesome neighbor and friend, we were blessed with some of the things they didn’t want to move with them; their grill among many other things. It is timely because we were debating buying a new grill because ours was starting to rust really bad (the salty air is not good for grills here!) but didn’t want to spend a lot of money for just under two years. While the movers will move them, the cleaning requirements is just unreal for them.

Rebekah LOVES purple. She constantly joked with me that she wanted me to make her a quilt. She never really expected it (especially when her move came very suddenly). It was always my intention to teach her to quilt. She showed interest, but with a younger daughter and then last year home-schooling her children, it wasn’t a possibility.

When I found out she was moving a few weeks ago, I really wanted to make her a quilt. I looked in my stash, naturally, for something purple. I really didn’t have anything. Then I was organizing some older projects and came across the blocks for this. They have been finished for a few years (like four) just awaiting the perfect setting for the quilt.

I never bought the finishing kit for this BOM quilt. I had bought several yards of the white fabric that is in it because I lucked upon it when I was out shopping one time when we lived in Washington. I decided it was time to finish it and give it to her. I even had the perfect backing and binding fabric that was accidentally bought a few months ago . I thought it was a different color online and bought enough for another project. It was meant to be!

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After I showed it at guild this past Monday night, I was coming home and she and her husband was in their garage finishing up last minute things before the packers came the next day. Though I had planned on giving it to her in a gift bag, the opportunity was perfect. That way if she wanted to pack it with her household goods she could.

We will miss having you as a neighbor, Rebekah!

Puzzled

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Kim

My husband recently took a trip to Japan and came back with some gifts for us. My daughter got a Barbie and my son got some Japanese Pokémon cards (which just made his day!). My husband brought me this:

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