Heirlooms

     I just finished quilting a precious quilt.  When we recently moved, I rediscovered some quilt tops that had been pieced by my grandmother.  I found this sweet Red Riding Hood appliqued top.  Each of the faces were handpainted.  I know that my grandmother pieced and appliqued the top, but I don't know who painted the faces for her.  Little Red Riding Hood is one of Harper's favorite stories, so I decided to finish the quilt for her and Addie..  It pleases me that they will have a little bit of Grandma Lena, also. 
     The top is large, it covers a queen size bed. Since moving, I have not found a long arm quilter to finish my quilting projects, so I decided that it is time to learn to free motion quilt.  I watched several YouTube videos and dug in.  I am pleased with how it turned out.  It took quite a few hours and some sore shoulders, but I enjoyed the project. I am determined to try free motion quilting on smaller projects to perfect my stitching. 
      Now, I think we need to take this baby on a picnic! I have washed and dried the quilt and it launders well.

Children's Corner Cece

Remember Children's Corner patterns? I recently rediscovered them while I was searching online for patterns for my granddaughters using knit fabrics. I used this company many years ago when I was smocking and heirloon sewing, they are quality patterns. There are countless sites online to find PDF patterns for knits for very reasonable prices, if not free. These patterns require printing, cutting, then taping back together to obtain the pattern pieces. I find this process better for small items or items all in the same size. Children's Corner patterns are not inexpensive, but you receive a tissue pattern that is not nested. This means that each piece of each size, this pattern included 0-6 months up to size 4, is included in the envelope. This is great for sewing multiple sizes.  Children's Corner's sewing instructions are simple, thorough, and easy to follow.  These are great patterns for those just beginning to sew. I used Cece for these dresses, I purchased the knit jersey from fabric.com. Sewing with knit is fun and these fabrics are so soft and great for little ones.  Children's Corner gives good tips on setting up your sewing machine for knits. I use a ballpoint needle and zigzag stitches along with my serger. This is a great project for those little ones, no snaps, buttons, or zippers!

Machine Embroidery

I have been able to experiment a little bit more with my embroidery machine, lately.  I have an older model Babylock Ellageo.  It still uses floppy disks and does not have the ability to connect by USB to a computer, so getting new designs has been a bit of a journey.  I have an external floppy drive for my laptop to transfer files to the machine.  Editing has been a challenge, mostly just add designs one letter at a time on the machine's screen.  But just recently I found a free editing program called "My Editor". This is a basic embroidery editing software that has been around awhile, but I haven't used it before.  It allowed me to pull in my monogram font files and create a name, then size and edit it as a new file.  It works with all embroidery machine file types. It made creating the names on these stockings so much easier. I think I will be using my embroidery machine more often now. I know several of you have embroidery machines, and might be having the same issues with editing.  There are some great embroidery editing software packages available, but they are quite
pricey.  This one is great for those of us just looking to have some fun.

2017 Happenings

Touching base and catching up with the changes we have been making this fall.  First of all, we welcomed sweet Adelyn in October and Harper is loving her baby sister! Also in October, David started a new job and with that we began a move to Jesup, GA.  We spent Christmas here with all of our children and are enjoying getting to know the Coastal Georgia area.  We then went to Grant to spend the New Year's weekend with our Click and Schnuelle families.  I sorely miss my AJHS family, but had lots to do settling in here to keep me busy during the holidays. I reconnected with an old friend, Sheryl, who lives here in Jesup, and we have been attending their church. I have plans to visit the many state parks, historical sites, and beaches here and plan to document those here. I will have to learn how to garden in the warm, sandy climate, but look forward to an early spring. We actually had a 3 inch snow the first week of January, which was a surprise,

The palms and palmettos looked strange covered in snow.  The sun has returned and I am enjoying the warmer winter days.

I hope to also try out some new recipes that I have been collecting, along with many sewing projects. My prayer is that I will adjust to this new home and soon find my place to serve here. I would love to hear from all of you.