teddy bear quilt

I got asked to fix a teddy bear quilt for my nephew. The top wasn't actually quilted to the back.  But my other step-sister who was preggo asked if I could also make one like it for her baby. 

Today I started the draft of the new quilt. I laid it out on the kitchen table and measured and noted colors and sizes of blocks. Then I placed my pin board with a piece of swedish tracing paper under the center bears and began to pin.

Then I lifted the quilt off my board and marked the holes with dots. the I draw the lines between the dots and waalaa. I have a pattern.  tonight watching Greys Anatomy and Private Practice, I'll pin the teddy bear quilt. I'm going to DVR Project Runway and watch it in the morning.  The Hubby left this morning for a conference about 2 hours away. Tomorrow, I and a friend are going to fargo for a genealogy conference on Saturday.  I made my shoppng list for the new quilt. I need four colors of fake fur and lots of flannel.

Pantry clean up

As I was putting away groceries,  I got frustrated with my pantry.  Don't get me wrong I love the silly thing.  But stuff was falling off the shelves and I couldn't always tell if I have pickles or mayo. I grabbed the garbage can and went to town.  I threw away stuff that hasn'e been used in 12 years, from when we moved to Minnesota.  How do I know? It had packing tape on the lid from the movers.  I cleaned up leaking bottles of honey and something someone gave me.  I have a hard time throwing things like weird hot mustard from  a gift basket.  I won't use it.  I had planned on donating most of the stuff, but The expiration dates nixed that idea.

When we first moved in the space along the stairs to the basment, was 8 inches deep and probably ten feet tall.  Yes there are places on the pantry that I need one of those grabbers, to reach. The Hubby and I put up adjustable shelves. Over the years the  pantry just became a whereever it could fit space.  Now it is clean and organized. I now know that I have lots of peanut butter, which is good because number 2 son is coming home on leave.

I'm working on cleaning out and donating lots of our clutter. next up is the bathroom.  I have a drawer full of stuff that is preventing the drawer from working properly.

Renaissance fair ready

Earlier I showed you the vest I modified, but here are pictures of the kid all dressed and ready for the fair.

We quickly decided she needed a money pouch for her phone and stuff.

 Happy kid, she even took it to work that night.

 Just a simple small messenger bag, with a very long strap so she could wear it cross body.

I closes the flap with a snap set.  The color went really well with the vest and skirt.

Embroidery

Today the Big Embroidery machine hummed away as it stitched a pile of shirts for a local business. I finished faster than I thought so I folded up the shirts and delivered them.  I got paid right away, so I can add that check to the bank in the morning, while I run a few quick errands, dry cleaners, bank, etc.

Then embroidered a name on a pocket of one of the totes and the scripture case for my granddaughter.

 Loving the Disney'ish font for my granddaughter.

While the embroidery machine stitched it's heart out, I also cut the strips for the zipper gusset. I then sewed two strips to the zipper, and then the bottom of the gusset to the zipper panel.  I started to pin and found than I need to let the side seams out a touch.  Last time I need to take in a lot.

Tonight while I watch Project runway I'll unpin and unpick the two side seams and figure out how much I need to adjust the gusset.

My new desktop came today. I need to use Windows Transfer to copy and move my files, then disconnect the old computer and put the new one in place.  I'll do this while the rolls are rising.

I had a really good day. I was organized and had everything laid out, ready to get to work

Sewing Totes

I love to sew simple quick totes, that I personalize.  I am in the midst of making three totes and a  scripture bag.  I have everything cut out, ready for the embroidery.

I finished one tote with a ton of pockets.

I combined the pick a pocket bag with the quick tote and made it very wide. The tote has six pockets, three on each side.

Tomorrow is all about t-shirts and work shirts for a local business. Hopefully while the t-shirts are stitching on the big machine, me and the serger are zipping along in the construction of the totes and  scripture bag. Friday is baking day.  The Hubby's work is having a going away dinner on Saturday for one of the co-workers and I always get asked to bring the potato rolls. They melt in your mouth.

Genealogy Sunday afternoon

Most Sunday afternoons, I spent in the Family History Center, helping people with their genealogy or working on my own.  I ordered in some films from Salt Lake and they arrived this week.
So I quickly took snap shots of the different sections that are on each film reel.

This means that this is the Cathloic Church in Gaz, Croatia. Church Books, Rodenih is birth records from 1878 - 1894. I also scanned the first pages of each section so I can translate each column. I made a list for each reel.  This will make my searching through the film faster.  This way when I want to find a birth from December 1880, I know what film reel to pull and which section to start in.  The ledgers are in chronological order.

I am so glad I found a great online serbian-croat translator.  But sometimes the translator goes huh????? In different time the accents are placed differently.  I always start with an idea, like birth, death and marriage. That way if I type in umrlica and it comes back with no results, then I cross reference death - umrlih.

I am making a cheat list as I go along.  I need to translate months of the year and make a list.

best book ever

This is the best book ever, by Judith Turner.  The book can be found here.  I ordered it, because Judith is in Austria, I turned around and ordered the e-book version.  I read it in five hours.  I have been a sloppy alterer. I just normally pinch in the sides and sew up, straight through the waist band and the hem, which leaves a bump.

I did this faux suede skirt two weeks ago. see my messy job.  But this is for me, so.  Now I can go back and clean up my mess and make it look like it is supposed to, like it wasn't even altered.

The daughter is going to the Renaissance Fair south of Minneapolis with some friends so they are going to dress up.  She had borrowed a wenches dress, but it was a cheap costume for Halloween and the more I touched it the more I hated it.  I was just going to replace the ribbon lacing with a real leather shoestring, but I popped three rivets out.  yes I can replace them. The sleeves were mesh but had been slit and the mesh was pulling away from the shoulders.  The daughter and I decided that she would borrow a shirt from me, a crinkle cotton that skims her body, then her own long blue skirt, I took in (she has lost 50 lbs) and I modified a vest from the thrift store.

I didn't take any before pictures, so I staged one.  Before:

 After, I used Judith's techniques of pinning and sketching the look. Then I took my vest/bodice and drafted the right curve to the new neckline. Then I chalked the nest neckline and then cut it 5/8 inches in.  I serged the new neckline, then flipped it under and top stitched it down.

The new vest is really nice.  We debated over cutting off the button placket and putting in grommets, but the daughter decided that leaving the button is better, because then she can wear this vest with a nice top and skirt or pants.

I'll post about the skirt later, because I need to start dinner.

Shirts and Hats

I figured out why my tensions were so off on my Pro machine.  I adjusted and stitched, adjusted and stitched, etc until I grabbed the book again.  I decided maybe my bobbin case needed to be adjusted.  I have two, I actually just switched them and the tension is good.  I test stitched out my design again to be sure. Then I finished two shirts.

Started the hats. The hats are in two steps.  First is the side above the left ear. This gets hooped with my smallest hoop using the hoop master's glove or baby onesie attachment.

Then once I finished all baker's dozen of these. The Bear 2011 stitched out fast, I unhooped and clipped a loose thread, hooped the next hat, and the one on the machine was done.  All finished in about 1 hour.  I'm glad I bought two of every hoop for my machine.

 I set up the hat frame for part two.  I got one front logo stitched and will finish the others tomorrow morning. I'd like to deliver them after lunch.   

Better day

Today was a much better day.  I revisited the patches. Turns out only one of the patches, of course the one I had tried to rinse out the stabilizer from was on the wrong stabilizer.

I'm kinda messy.  I have great organizational plans, but then I figure out better plans, etc.
I have a habit of just shoving my tube of stabilizer in my cubby system, to sort later. Which is why I ended up with the wrong stabilizer. I had sewn two of the patches and tossed the tube of Wet N Gone back in the rack and then when I decided on making a third, I grabbed the wrong tube.

So first thing I did this morning was to straighten out my cubbies of stabilizer. Now I actually can find what I need and know what I need to buy.

All the open rolls now have slap bracelets around them with the name of what it is marked on the bracelet with a sharpie.  But I also tucked the label of the roll inside the tube, in case the bracelet gets separated from the roll. Like kinds of stabilizer are in the same cubby or next to each other.  While I was straighten out my mess, I stitched out another black and white patch.

Then this afternoon was all about errands.  I ran to the Dry Cleaner, dropped off the patches, they are a hit.  The niece was deciding which patch on which shirt when I left.  I told them to call me if they need more patches.  The black and pink patch looked great against her pink shirt.  I also told her I had pink fabric and could do black lettering or white.  I did remember to bring home my dry cleaning.

Quick drive through the bank for cash for the weekend, then a sandwich.  I took the car to the dealer for a recall checkup.  The inspection was good, only took 10 minutes, no needed work.  Then home, picked up the daughter. She's been wanting to practice in the stick shift car. We only have one and she doesn't want to practice with Dad. Around and around the local school parking lot, stop, first gear, start, second gear turn, stop, etc.  She did pretty good so we went down a few back roads, to have her shift into 3rd and 4th and back down.  the around the parking lot some more.  Then I had her drive me down a busy road into town to where she works. There is a stop with a small rise and a red light.  She even did really well around a truck hauling a boat whose lights were not working.  She likes to jiggle the gear shift back and forth in neutral between shifting.  I told her to stop that because she's gonna end up in the wrong gear, straight from first to second then straight from 3rd to 4th. Two minutes later she jiggled and ended up in third not fifth.  She stopped jiggling.  I can see that's gonna be a hard habit to break.  Got home at 4 pm. 

A friend of the Hubby's called and talked to him for 30 minutes.  I set up for tomorrow. Yes it's supposed to be personal sewing, but I missed a few days being under the weather earlier in the week.

One of those days

Today was one of Those Days.  Where very little went right.  Even the things that seemed to go great went bad fast.

Yesterday, I began to work on a shirt and hat order. The simple sew the logo and names on two t-shirt should have been done in an hour.  Three hours later, I was giving up and running to Walmart for a new shirt. The customer had bought the camo shirts on clearance of course.  Which meant that there wasn't any medium shirts. I bought two XL's just in case.  The embroidery machine jammed and I had to cut the bobbin thread, to get the shirt off the machine.  Leaving behind a small hole in the shirt.

This morning I picked out the thread of the two letters, an hour worth of work, slow and steady, clip and pick the threads, clip and pick the threads.  I then ironed on a small piece of no show mesh stablizer to the back after I pinched the hole as closed as it would go. I went back to the computer and added a tree behind the Name. Once the tree stitched out over the hole, you could not even tell there had been a problem. Once I finished the name, my machine gave me an error message about the wiper sensor, which is what pulls back the thread before clipping.  I was done, so I manually trimmed the thread and un-hooped the shirt.  Quick lunch break and then I placed the shirt on the machine to begin the business logo, when I got more error messages. Thankfully the stitching only did the first lock down stitches and the jump stitch to the start of the first part of the logo.

A quick call to my dealer and I fixed the thread jam, under the needle plate.  I decided that I had better do a stitch out to make sure everything was good. 

I just grabbed some twill squares and stitched it out.  You can't see it but the bobbin thread is showing on top.  So I rethreaded the machine, changed needles, cleaned out the bobbin area again, and the second stitch out still wasn't any better.  The best part was I used the serger to finish the edges. This stitch out will go in my customer file for next time. 

I also have a small job to make some patches for the dry cleaner in town. They are sponsoring their great niece in the rodeo and want patches to sew on her shirt sleeves.  Look good, except when I went to soak off the wash a way stabilizer, it didn't wash away.  Crap, Now I have to slowly trim the extra stablizer without cutting the satin edge. Tomorrow I need to add the patch attach to the back so in a pinch they can just iron on the patches.

Biscornu and Baby Announcements

Last week everytime I walked into the sewing room. I felt so overwhelmed with everything, I would just walk back out.  I would get mad at myself for not getting anything done. I'm a Virgo, so I plan.  I made a new schedule to grab my mess by the hair and drag it out of my cave.

I color coded my day. I only allow myself 30 minutes on the computer in the morning. Sewing 9-12, lunch and then Sew 1:30 - 4:30. I alternate business sewing and personal sewing. Weds and Fri mornings are devoted to Errands and Weds afternoon is for paperwork. 4:30-6 is computer time.

So far the schedule is working for me. I plotted out my business sewing into a project or two a session.
I finished two Baby Announcements.

A part of my personal sewing is, a finished Biscornu. Biscornu is an eight sided pin cushion. The Yahoo group for my software had laying out cross-stitching a Biscornu in the software. I had a good time playing in the software. So I digitized another one. I could not find my stuffing and thought I'd have to stop by JoAnn's to get some, then I was talking to my Daughter and spotted the bag. 

 The first one is 4 x 4 inches.

I love the second one, The original Biscornu pattern had alot of white space which makes it hard to count to place the x's in the right place.  I added extra designs and borders and was very careful of the jump stitches. I am ticked to death over this new pattern. I'm going to sew the pin cushion together by machine.

The new one is 5 x 5 inches.

This morning was for digitizing while I waited to the Schwan man. I got five projects done. I even stitched out the second biscornu (twice, once for each side). I stitched a third Baby Announcement, but I need to clip threads and press. After I run errands tomorrow, I can frame it, ready for delivery.  My machine hummed away while I clipped threads and cheanged thread. 

I have tomorrow's projects starched and ready to go. 

Tennessee backroads

I decided to stop and take some pictures of the back road on the way to my Dad's house. It takes me 15 minutes from their house to the hotel.

 The tunnels of trees make everything feel very Lord of the Rings.

 I keep waiting for the Shire to be around the next corner.

 The climb up the mountain is interesting, tight turns, road narrowing then converting to gravel. the bridges that only allow one car to squeak over it, the big boulders that force the roads to curve tightly around them.  neighbors who back out without looking, the guys who run a stop sign, because the road is not very travelled.

This afternoon, we drove over the the nearest large town to do a little shopping.  My Dad is very patient, then he spotted fabric with a western theme.  I bought 2 panels (which actually gave me 4 panels and the coordinating cowboy fabric for pillow for their couch. My Dad picked the coordinating fabric from 3 fabrics I picked off the shelf. 

The third fabric I bought is fall leaves with chestnuts.

My Step-Mom asked me to fix a teddy bear quilt for one of the nephews.  He is so excited that I am going to fix his quilt.  The top is well worn, but the real problem is that they didn't actually quilt the batting.  There is a perfect spot to embroider his name and birthdate before I put the quilt back together.

 My Step-Sister is preggo and my Step-Mom would like me to make a new Teddy bear quilt for the new baby.

Thursday Morning

The past few days have been going by so fast, well except Monday.  Monday was hang out at the hotel then at the airport until my flight to Nashville. I should have stayed at the downtown hotel and gone back to the Family History Library.  Even though I didn't have my binder I could have work something. I did poke around on Ancestry.com.
Tuesday was spent visiting with family around the kitchen table.  After a while, we were trying to decide about dinner and decided to go to Golden Corral.  It was fun.  My dad goes silent and his head down  when you put a plate in front of him.  His whole attention is on his plate. He's always done this, so focused on eating. After dinner we hung out gabbing on the porch swing.

Weds was so fun.  I stay at the local Super 8 (the only hotel in Town). So we can use the pool. Yesterday, All the local grand kids, my step-sisters and my folks played in the pool.  My dad and step-mom played hard and fierce with the boys. The chlorine was really high even sitting on the pool deck it was burning your eyes. You could not open your eyes in the water. We often took the boys to the bathroom and flushed their eyes with water.  Debbie said it was the best birthday ever. My step-mom is a wonderful lady.

I got back to the hotel around 11 pm again. I brushed my teeth and crashed.

Minnesota Nice or Mom Syndrome Day 5 SLC

Today started out pretty much on target with the plan.  Get up eat breakfast, meet June to walk over to watch the Broadcast of "The Spoken Word" a weekly broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The choir was awesome.

 As we walked out of the Convention Center and was greeted by Sister Missionaries who announced in their different languages that they are available to show us around Temple Square and share about the Church.

June and I walked to the Joseph Smith Building and attended church. The chapel was beautiful.

Afterward I changed into jeans and drove to the airport.  The gate got changed after I had been sitting there reading for awhile. At the new gate, the flight was delayed. Turned out that the incoming flight was delayed due to mechanical issues. Delta replaced the plane with a smaller plane, so then our flight was overbooked. They called for volunteers to give up their seats and got a few volunteers, very slowly.  As they were getting ready for boarding, I got called up because they need to give me a new seat assignment.

The Mom Syndrome
The young girl behind me didn't get a seat assignment. She looked like she was gonna cry because she wouldn't have a ride home from Nashville if she wasn't on this flight.

The Mom in me wanted to take care of her.  The counter people were gonna try anything to get her to Nashville, but everything even routing her through Seattle to Atlanta to Nashville was leaving her without a ride home.  Delta needs more flights into Nashville, there is only one per day direct from Salt Lake City to Nashville.  My plans are flexible enough, so I stepped up and gave up my seat. 

Delta gave me a $400 voucher for a future flight, a hotel and meal vouchers. They upgraded me on tomorrow's flight.  The girls behind the counter even gave me a toothbrush/overnight kit for tonight, because my luggage was on the plane already.  Waiting for the shuttle to the hotel, I called my hotel, rental car and my folks. Then I called the Hubby.   He just laughed, because we had been talking on the phone when they called the first time for volunteers, I think he knew I was going to end up giving up my seat. 

The young girl kept saying she didn't know how to thank me.  I think she did a pretty good job.  Hopefully she will pay it forward someday.

Day 4 Salt Lake City

The last of the conference went really well.  I attended all three sessions, then we had lunch with a talk afterwards.

Session Two was about resources for Eastern European research on Ancestry.com .  I did something funny. The speaker was on slide 2, when I asked him to stop and chnage the color of his text to something other than Ancestry yellow/green.  Everyone else in the class agreed it was too hard to read.  I like to sit in the back of the room and could not read the slides.  I'm just getting old.  He laughed and quickly took our tips on how to change the color and we were off and running again.  I do learn something in each class, even it isn't about my area.

After lunch we wandered back to the Family History Library.  I feel like a goob taking pictures of the library, so I didn't.  I used all but 15 cents on my $5 copy card. You swipe the card to activate the copier and the printer function on the copiers. About 5 o'clock my tummy started to growl, so I headed back to the room to drop of my stuff and to talk to the Hubby. 

Two Salt Lake City blocks down was an Olive Garden. I had Shrimp Ravioli. The table across from had four small kids under 6. The youngest was not a happy camper and was screaming and whining.  He had to much stimulation and needed a nap bad.  I wanted to give the Mom my bread sticks to feed him, but before I could get up the waiter thought the same thing.  But the bread and salad was not what he wanted.  Mom had to take him out of the dining room for a walk.

Day 3 Salt Lake City

Good day for doing genealogy.  Every day is a good day for genealogy.  This morning's conference sessions were about Prussia  and Polish research.  I attended the first session on Using the EWZ micofilms, the EWZ was the German immigrant tracking system for moving the ethnic Germans back to the father land in front of the german army in WWII. The amount of detail including photos from 1939-1946 is amazing.  The genealogy that was included is great for us, but had an ugly cast to it. If you were Jewish or Polish, even if your were german jewish you were not transferred. The German government only wanted Pure Germans.
Because I don't have any Polish and Prussian ancestry, I went to the Family History Library at 10:00. I had a list of a few books on Croatian Immigration to America I wanted to look at.  I made a few copies of some pages from each. Then I went back down to the International Floor.  I had my one-on-one consultation, this afternoon.  Dr Edlund, a professor at BYU in Eastern Eurpean genealogy helped me narrow down one of my villages, the county and the district.  Then we found the Evangelical Lutheran church.  It sounds so easy, but it took us an hour.  The first village is so small it wasn't in the gazetteer for Hungary. My village used to be in Hungary in 1890's.

Then I pulled my first microfilm from the drawer and began the very slow process of looking for my surnames. Guess What??  I found one, while I'm not sure if this is my guy.  This tells me that I found the right film.

Look how pretty the surname is. The handwritting is lovely.  I can't figure out what it says yet, but I will soon.

About 4:30, my stomach was protesting that it was hungry. I rode the Trax again to Appleby's for an early dinner and then past Temple Square on the way back. I walked back and strolled through Deseret Books. I was looking for T-shirts for the kids, but they didn't have any t-shirts.  But check out the cool bronze statue.

   

Day 2 Salt Lake City

Today was day one of the FEEFHS conference. Federation of Eastern European Family History Societies is a small conference.  The conference is setup with six break out sessions in the morning and then after lunch we meeting with a consultant for a one-on-one session in our area of research in the Family History Center Library.  A group of us walked five blocks to The Gateway mall for lunch. I hitched a free ride back to the hotel via the trax, a light rail train. Check out the bronze pidgeons on the roof of the station across the street from the hotel.

After spending  the afternoon in the Family History Library. I walked to dinner and then met one of my classmates so we could go to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir practice at the Convention Center. It was awesome to sit in the conference center,

 I really enjoyed watching the conductor as he worked with the different sections of the songs.

The organist and the giant pipe organ were amazing.  I'm going back for a performance on Sunday morning, they perform a show called The Spoken Word at 9:30 am. I don't fly out until 5 pm on Sunday.

Day 1 Salt Lake

My flight was very early, this morning which is nice, but tiring. I got to Minneapolis, then was on a very full flight to Salt Lake City. I was a bit annoyed at the car rental line, but got over it when the girl upgraded me, because it was all they had.  I'm driving a Dodge Dakota pickup, very nice, basic little truck with four doors.  My son's would not fit in the back, but the grandkids might.  This would actually be a great truck for a teenager or 20 somethings like my boys.
The flight arrived at 10:45 am, so I couldn't check in at the hotel, so I went shopping.  First stop Lane Bryant, for jeans. The Lane Bryant closet to the airport was in this very nice outdoor mall. I took pictures of kids playing in the water fountain in the middle of this mall.  I missed the singing and dancing, that happens every 30 minutes.

The music ended and alot of the parents grabbed their kids and disappeared. I wanted to get out of the parking garage, before 1 hour was up, so I didn't have to pay for parking.  The mall is called The Gateway. Turns out to be 5 Salt Lake City blocks from my hotel.  7 Salt Lake City Blocks equal 1 mile, while 10 regular city blocks are a mile.

This is the view from my room at the Salt Lake Plaza. that is the Capital building in the background.

 The second picture is of the back of the Family History Library and the dome behind that is the Mormon Tabernacle where the Choir sings every day at 10 am. I might have to play hookey one morning and go to see them.

I also found three sewing stores and a grocery store before I headed to the hotel. I only bought 2 fat quarters and a pattern.  A quick quiet dinner in the restaurant next door and now it's check my email and post time.  I got up at 3 am Central Time and it's now 15 hours later, I might turn out the lights soon.