SNOWMEN DONE

 I made the binding and sewed it onto the Snowmen quilt today.  It's done.

This is finish number 17 for the year!

FINISHED QUILTING SNOWMEN

 I was a bit hesitant to start up the longarm; was it going to work after crashing?  I had to give it a try eventually and find out!  But, I was happy to see that everything seemed to be okay.  I changed the needle and finished the last little bit of the program to finish the Snowmen quilt.  It quilted out just beautifully.  The Snowmen quilt is quilted.

This quilting design is perfect for this quilt.

SNOWMEN QUILT QUILTING

 I loaded the Snowmen quilt onto the longarm this morning and set up a pantograph that has swirls and snowflakes.  Everything was going just great.  The panto was stitching out beautifully until we got to the last row when things started to go awry.

First, there was two thread breaks for no apparent reason.  Then *crash*  the machine made a horrible noise and stopped with a alarming icon saying the machine was jammed.  The needle had come down onto the plastic cup of the #74 foot and was jammed there.  Using the hand wheel I was able to lift the needle up, but the foot's cup was broken (of course it was, it's a poorly designed plastic cup and this is actually the second one I've had that has broke- at $150 each). I gave up for the day and shut it down.

I don't understand what happened.  How could the needle move enough to not go down in the stitch hole, but move over and strike the cup?

Hopefully, the needle bar isn't bent or something.  

BIRD LEGS

 I've been working on the Fine Feathered Friends wool embroidery project.  I've appliqued all of the pieces down and today I embroidered the legs onto the birds.

DARRELL AND THE TREE

 In 2005 we planted a tree in front of our house in Renton on Darrell's birthday.  And I've been taking a picture on this day ever since.

2025

2020

2015

Planting day 2005

SCORPION

 I made a Scorpion from beads for my Scorpio husband's birthday.

CORAL STITCH WITH BEADS

 Continuing on with my attempts to learn beaded embroidery, the next page uses the Coral Stitch.

BEADS WITH CHEVRON STITCH

 Back to work on the bead book pages.  Today it was the Chevron Stitch.

STAR BOOK

 I watched the replay of a live video from Tuesday that I couldn't attend.  It was with e bond, she showed us how to make a Star Book.  I followed along and got it done during the video.  It is a simple and fun little project.

It involves folding the papers and gluing them all together somewhat like an accordian.  Then when you open it up the pages for a star.

MORE BIRDS

 I worked on the Fine Feathered Friends again today.  I got them all cut out and fused down, then began appliqueing them to the background.

Fusible attached to wool, ready to be cut out.

I thought some of the fabric choices that were included with the kit were not quite right.  I dug into my wool stash and found some better colors and used those instead.

I was using Sue Spargo wool thread to applique the pieces down and a spiral eye needle.  Unfortuntely the thread would occassionally get caught on the eye and start to shred and tangle.