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.