#46, 47, 48

#46 Hill and Valley

When I was little, my brother's absolute favorite color was red. I had different favorites, depending on the day, but I always steered clear of red. It was Erik's color. But you know what? I really like red fabric. I like red and white, and I would love to make a red and white quilt sometime. But for now I'll just settle on a red and white block.

#47 Homemaker

I love this block. It was kind of tough, having to sew some seams that pivot in the middle. You can see in the top left corner of the center square that it didn't turn out perfectly. But I think with some ironing and perhaps some seam-ripping, it may be easy to fix.

I love the word "homemaker." It's an old-fashioned word, and many people say it's outdated. But I'm realizing in my crazy Foreign Service life, that one of my first missions as we move from place to place is to be a homemaker. We move from house to house and from city to city, from country to country. Our housing and furnishings are provided for us, which is really convenient. It helps us save money, and we don't have to deal with the hassle of finding short-term apartments, losing down-payments, or getting ripped off in foreign countries. But while we're given a house, it's up to us to make it a home. Specifically, it's up to me to make it a home-- for my husband, for my girls, and for myself. It's my job to feed the four of us, raise the girls in righteousness, and make our home a refuge from the world. It needs to feel homey, even when it's new and unfamiliar. 

We just moved into a new apartment last week. I've been trying harder this time to get settled in faster. We've bought a shoe rack, some drawers for the bathroom counter, and other organizational tools. I'm finding that having a place for everything (instead of a heap, a bag, or a suitcase) helps make the house feel like home for me. I'm not much of a decorator, but having familiar things to do makes our house feel like home. My husband bought a bike, which he rides to and from work. The girls have a bunch of their toys, and we already hit up the library for some books to read. We borrowed some movies, and we have many of our favorites with us. I'm setting up my sewing table, and once I'm finished with that, I'll have no real excuse anymore for my clothes not being fully unpacked.

#48 Homeward Bound

I don't know how long it took me to make this block, but I do know that I spent every minute of it singing the song by Simon and Garfunkel.

#43, 44, 45

#43 Garden Path

I like this one a lot. I like the bold colors, and I like that it kind of looks like a game board. I could probably make a new version of "Sorry!" or "Aggravation" and play it on this. But it's all fresh and flowery, so it reminds me of gardens as well.

#44 Gentleman's fancy

This is supposed to use the same green and the same purple, but I kind of ran out. So I used two different kinds, but I bet you didn't notice until I pointed it out. I really like using bold colors more than these pastels, but the pansy/violet fabric was just so cute, I had to use it, and this green was delicate and worked nicely with it.

As a side note, the green striped piece was a scrap from one of my Grammy's shirts. She likes to tailor her shirts to be 3/4 sleeves and a bit shorter on the waist, and this is what happens when I end up with the scraps!

#45 Grape basket

I hadn't used any purple in my quilt until this week, and when it's named "grape basket," you kind of have to make it purple. Otherwise it's just "basket," and that's no fun. I kind of like all these basket squares. And since the final quilt is on point (set out as diamonds instead of squares), they'll be really cute in the final project.

#40, 41, 42

So, what's with the radio silence? We have an excuse, both of us. It's because we've been hanging out together. That's right. Lame.

But really for me, this blog is a way to feel close to my family and hang out with my sister while we're far apart. So if I'm crashing at her house, I'm feeling pretty close. Underfoot sometimes, in fact. 

Anyway. Enough excuses for me. Sarah's excuse now (and for the next little while) is that she is on a cruise. She didn't bring me, her sewing machine, or her fabric (that slacker!!), so she'll be even more behind than she already is. But she'll be tan, and that will be nice.

So, for this week's blocks:

#40 Friendship block

This is such a nice, simple block. I like it, and I like the fabrics I stole from my mom to use for it.

#41 Friendship star

I'll probably redo this one at the end. I loved these fabrics together in the End of Day block a few weeks ago, but they really don't work in this one! It really emphasizes that I cut up a large print that doesn't match up at all once it's sewn together.

 I don't really like the Friendship Star pattern, anyway. It always looks a little lop-sided, like I need to squint and raise an eyebrow to even look at it.

Maybe I'll redo it in black and silver and call it "Ninja throwing star!" Then I might like it.

#42 Fruit Basket

In case you didn't notice, this is not a complete square. I know, thanks for clarifying, right!

I've been in the process of moving from China to America for the last month or so. I cut these pieces before I left China, but since I hadn't yet made all the templates necessary, I stopped in the middle of cutting it out. Then I packed my stuff, moved to the other side of the world, and I haven't gotten it back yet. Oops. I did pack the rest of this fabric in the "Go to DC" stuff, not the "Ship to Brazil and open next year" stuff. So that's good.

#37, 38, 39

For these fabric, since I'm at my mom's house, I got to go through some of my mom's fabrics and use a bunch of hers! I also got to take a bunch for future use. Wahoo!

#37 Flower pot

The large Chinese character on the bottom of the flower pot is 花, which means flower. Nice, huh!

#38 Four Winds

Okay, okay. This is not the Four Winds block. The Four Winds block has a total of 56 #13 triangles, and I saw it and decided, "No thank you!" So I made this one. It's a variation of #30, End of Day. So I shall call this End of Days.

#39 Friendship

I really love this one! These are all fabrics I'm taking... pending approval from my mom, of course. I love the tiny calicoes, and I love the blue and gold combination. And I love the Shaun the Sheep background I decided on while I'm here at my mom's house. ;)

Baby Back

I've got myyyyyy, babybackbabybackbabybackbabybackbabyback...
It only took them 1 day to fix my sewing machine! (and another day for me to go pick it up, and another day for me to finally unpack it.)
Turns out it doesn't wobble because it's missing a foot, it wobbles because of my sway-back table. I forgot to have them look at the little screw that holds the foot on though. It doesn't stay tight. Next time--it's not a huge problem.
Here are some pictures:

 

back on the desk, ready to be unwrapped

the before picture with the broken spring and dust everywhere

 spring all fixed

 all cleaned out

I'm a little irked because they actually didn't clean it. It makes me wonder if they oiled it like they said they did, too. It wasn't a huge problem though. I just whipped out our air compressor and blew out the dust. I plan on doing this more regularly anyway. I also purchased a cool oil dropper thing so I can oil it more regularly, too. I suppose since I'm sewing practically every day now, I should probably take better care of my machine! 

Blocks 25 - 27

Despite my sewing machine problems this week, I was still able to sew three blocks! Remember how I was going to stop using as much purple...yeah, that didn't happen. ha!

#25: Cups & Saucers - I couldn't not use purple for this one...the diagram was purple! ;) I liked this one. It's cool how the triangles and squares came together to make the different square and then the neat border (does anyone say "neat" anymore? I need to go to bed, I'm reverting to the 90's).

 #26: Cut Glass Dish - I was about ready to cut someone when I saw how many stupid triangles to cut out for this one. I do admit that it turned out nicely though. I keep swearing that next time there are so many triangles I'm just going to do squares and sew down them twice and then cut in the middle to get the same result. I keep not doing it though. Next time!

#27: Darting Birds - Am I the only one who keeps reading the name of this wrong, like I'm a 12 year old boy? (hehe...farting birds...hehehe...). I think this will look better once it has a border on it. 3 of the 4 birds have funky shaped heads, and the edges are definitely not even or square. My mother told me when she first taught me how to match clothes that purple and red don't go together. Here's some of my teenager defiance shining through. I still think they look fine together. (I'm sure there was more to it than purple and red...it was probably that specific shirt and that specific pair of pants.) Sorry about the crappy picture...apparently I needed more light to avoid camera shake.

Sewing Woes

My sewing machine broke on Sunday! Ok, so actually it probably broke about a week ago. I started noticing it had an extra clicking noise when it sewed. (It's quite a noisy machine so I'm amazed that I noticed the extra click.) I figured it just needed to be oiled and so I started thinking about maybe looking to see if I had any oil in it somewhere...possibly. Honestly, I was only starting to wonder if I could use hair clipper oil on it. I'm a little lazy when it comes to machine maintenance. I need to work on that. The machine I have is the one my mother got when she got engaged to my father...in the 70's. It's an old Kennmore, and it seems like a lot of people have similar machines. They're built solidly and can definitely take a TON of use. I sort of wish that sewing machines had odometers on them so I could tell how many stitches it has sewn. In the past 6 months I have used it more than I have the whole time I've had it.
Anyway, so it had been clicking--I ran out of bobbin (does anyone else still get annoyed when the bobbin runs out and it turns out the past foot you've sewn actually isn't sewn, even though you know it will happen every time the bobbin runs out?). I pulled out the bobbin to wind it anew and there was an extra piece of metal in there with it. (!!!) Look, I took pictures:

 With flash.

 Without flash: see the little piece of metal on the open door?

 It goes right there. See how the right side has a thin piece of metal that loops around the thicker piece of metal? The left side doesn't have that...any more. Also note how dusty it is. I'm looking forward to taking an "after" picture of how clean it is when I get it back. 

Aaaaand another picture just like the second one. 

I took it in to the shop to get fixed, fully anticipating it to take a week. They told me the part that is broken isn't made anymore because it's so old but if they had one on a machine in the back they could just swipe it from that. It's called the hook driver spring. My kind sister-in-law lent me her (also ancient) machine to use in the meanwhile. 

I took it in yesterday and I got an email today saying it was done. I plan on picking it up tomorrow! It's strange how attached you get to a little machine when you use it almost every day. I've felt like I'm missing a limb. Ok, that's a little over-dramatic, but I have missed it. My sister-in-law's machine is nice though. It sure is a lot quieter than mine. It also has tighter stitches. It drives me nuts that it doesn't have a sharp hook to cut threads on though.