PROJECTS I HAVE MADE

Princess House with Princess puppets  I have made two of these Princess houses.

Barn with Animal puppets

This is a 24 watt Ottlight Lamp I bought at Joann Fabric to go over my Babylock Destiny. It is like sewing in the sunlight.

Donna also bought a 24 watt Ottlight lamp to put by her sewing machine.  Now we have a very light sewing room.  Donna has a very nice Viking Ruby machine. Her machine embroiders too.  Right now I have my machine set up for embroidery and Donna's is set up for sewing. It works out great.  I have been embroidering the houses and Donna sews them together for me. I really appreciate her help.

We belong to the all access club for the Anita Goodesign patterns.  Every month we get a magazine with new patterns. The last of September we got the magazine for October.  I thought I was all through making houses but a pattern was in it for a Nativity Scene.  It is just beautiful. I am really excited about it.

Grease Monkey Garage with Mechanic puppets.

 I am much faster at putting them together now. I have already made all the sections for the house.  Now I have to make the puppets.  There is the Baby Jesus, an Angel, Mary and Joseph, the three wise men, a Shepherd, and a Camel, a donkey and a sheep. There are other patterns in the magazine.  A disc comes with the magazine so you can transfer the patterns to the sewing machine. I have the wireless feature to transfer the patterns to my machine. I love all the technology we have today.

I will put some pictures on my blog when I am a little more finished with the Nativity Scene.  I am keeping this one for our house.

RETREAT ON CAMANO ISLAND

 It was fun to stay in this beautiful mansion.

 The beds, the sitting room with the recliners and the bath are all one huge room.

On August 5th and 6th, Donna and I went to Camano Island for a quilting retreat. The house was three stories.  It was originally a private residence. It was Donna's birthday on the 5th and this was what she wanted to do.  We got the master bedroom. The room was really large and the beds were great.  We had this large private bathroom with a claw foot tub and a big walk-in shower. Also, there was a large walk-in closet. Judy, who is in charge of these retreats, always spoils me. The sewing room was on the bottom level and our rooms and the kitchen/ dining area was on the second floor. This house was so large. Some of the ladies slept on the third floor which also had a master bedroom. Some of the ladies had to share rooms and bathrooms but all the rooms were large.

Donna and three others had August birthdays so we had cake and ice cream. The little girl is the granddaughter of the owner. She was a very sweet little girl and was dressed in her Princess dress.   

     We had a great time at the retreat and I was finally able to finish a quilt that I had bought material for two years ago. Donna cut the pieces and I sewed them together.

Alaskan Quilt

This is the quilt we worked on.  I made it for David.  I didn't mention it to him before because I was not sure if we would ever get it done. The sewing is fun but giving away the things you make is the best part.

The Princess Dream House is finished.  Diane submitted it to the Anita Goodesign Facebook site for me. They had messaged me to ask if they could publish it and I said yes. Today it was on Facebook.  I decided to share their face book post with friends. Under the picture Anita Goodesign wrote the following message.

                                 "Our customers keep on creating and it is marvelous! This amazing Princess Dream House was Shirley's first attempt at machine embroidery and we think she did a fabulous job!"

A FUN DAY!

Darrell came to Sequim today and we had a nice time.  He got here later than he thought he would because the traffic was so bad because of the Lavender Festival.  We went to the 1-0-1 Diner for lunch. There was so much traffic downtown and people all over the sidewalks.  We had to wait to be seated for lunch. The Diner was packed.  After lunch we came back to play with my sewing machine.  We  had a very nice afternoon.  I am so happy when any of my children can come over here.  I will get some pictures of the squares I am making next time. I am working on three projects.  One is a Princess house, one is a Grease Monkey garage and one is a barn. Each one has 18 squares each.  That is 54 squares.  I have three left to make.  I have done all the squares except one.  Donna made one square.  Of course then the squares have to be put together which is another project in itself.  All this entails many hours of work but I love doing it. I call it a labor of love because I can enjoy it and others can also. Hopefully, when Donna gets back from her trip she will be able to help me get the squares together. There are puppets to make on the machine also for each of the houses.  The patterns we are using is the Anita Goodesign.

 

Darrell and I used my Babylock Destiny to add his name to his shop coat.

PARADE IN CLALLAM BAY

On Saturday, July 9th we were in a parade in the small town of Clallam Bay.  Donna and I were in the White convertible and Leif drove the red Mustang.  The last picture shows us all lined up to go to through the parade. The Mustangs are all from the North Olympic Mustang club. The Mustang club won first place. It started raining right before the parade but it was fun anyway.  We left the windows open on the convertible so we were able to wave at everyone.

Notice the towels on both cars that say "North Olympic Mustangs".  Leif printed out a picture of their logo and Donna was able to scan it on my machine and enlarge it.  It took awhile on my machine to embroider but it turned out very nice. The reason I wanted the destiny so we could use the scanner.

FOR THE LOVE OF SEWING! MY DESTINY!

I just looked at my blog after all these months.  I have not written on my blog since October 30th, 2015.  I will just skip to the current year.  It is not that my life has been that dull but I just got busy with other things and completely ignored my blog.  I will try to do better.
      I am sure that everyone knows that I won a sewing machine at the Sewing expo in Puyallup in February of 2016.  I was almost in shock.  I could hardly believe that my number was called for the grand prize.  The picture above is the Babylock Destiny.  I won the Babylock Unity which is a $10,000 machine. When we went to the Babylock booth the next morning I saw this Destiny.  The main difference between the Unity and the Destiny is that the Destiny has a scanner.  When I saw that scanner I really wanted that one.  I sheepishly went to the salesman and asked if by any chance I could upgrade to the Destiny and he said sure. He let me upgrade to the demo they had at the Expo for $3000. The Destiny sells for $17,000.  I would never get an opportunity like that again.
      Of course there is no such thing as "free".  I have invested in the carrying case which was pricey and a very expensive book with all the details on how to do everything and then I had to buy the accessory case to hold all the accessories.  Of course then there was the embroidery thread, and the bobbin thread and the stabilizer and the batting and needles, etc.
      The machine sews, embroiders and quilts.  Donna and I took lessons and Debbie took me to one of the lessons. We have learned a lot. You can take the lessons as often as you want to.
        I have learned so much about machine embroidering in a relatively short time. I have been putting together some projects which are quite time consuming but a lot of fun.  I will show some pictures of those later. Getting this machine has given me something really exciting to do.  I go upstairs almost every day and work on it. The machine does the actual embroidering but you have to make appliques and plan how to cut fabrics.
      One thing that has surprised me is that the embroidery thread goes a long way.  I have used so much thread and none of my spools are completely empty yet. The bobbin thread goes much faster and the spools of bobbin thread are expensive. At Quality Sewing they told me about the pre threaded bobbins. It is cheaper to use the pre threaded bobbins than winding it yourself.  It is so easy too.  You drop a bobbin in and when it is empty just put a new one in.  I found it is cheaper to buy them through Amazon than to buy them at Quality Sewing.
       Next time I will tell you about the Anita Goodesign parties we have gone too.  You have fun and learn too.