Retreat, sort of

My interlude is drawing to an end, this coming Friday I will begin the new job. Weeks of leisure are coming to a close, and this is just a bit sad. I was getting used to having time to travel, sew, do this and that. But on the other hand it will be nice to reap the harvest of the past three harrowing years in form of a real job, so I supposed it will all be well.

At least the leisure time was rounded off with a very nice 2-day workshop in my favorite place to teach, the Petersberg Catholic Community College to the west of Dachau. Two days of 16 happy women sewing, we didn’t really stick to the ‘topic’ as had been announced in the catalogue, but very quickly everyone started working on various projects they had brought along. Several many-years-in-the-making items were finished, we had banned conversations about the pandemic, and everybody was happy.

 

My friend Regine and I stayed on for another three nights. We transferred the sewing machines, design walls and irons to our ‘family room’, which offered enough space for sewing. And we kept enjoying the perfectly timed meal times supplying us with a more than sufficient amount of food, no worries about preparing, cleaning up etc. A bit of walking in the morning, including the sunrise.

 

Twice we could sit out on the balcony in the sunshine in the afternoons, 

 

only today it has turned so cool that we must inadvertently admit that fall is on its way, and no sunshine either.

I had not brought any sewing for art, but simply for sewing for fun, and managed to start and finish the blocks for this second round using my templates for the ‘Free Wheeling Single Girl Ring’ by Denyse Schmidt. This time using up leftover workshop samples and some fabrics on which I had at some point tried out  shibori techniques.

 

It makes for a more unified impression than on the first attempt when I was using leftovers for the ring and the background fabrics. There is still a bit of work to do, squaring up and then sewing it all together, but I am happy with the result so far, so cheerful. Iris called it 'the pool party', with all these life-saving rings floating around. I like the image!

I also finally brought out the small Elna machine I had bought a few months ago – I am ashamed to admit I had not tried it yet. 

 

It has a perfect ¼ inch seam allowance and sews very nicely, I am very pleased. This is going to be my future workshop machine and I will have to see what to do with the wonderful Bernina 930 I have. (Which is my all-time favorite machine ever, but which has the serious drawback that it is an American machine and therefore always needs to be connected to a converter, which makes for heavy lugging around.) I used it to try out a ruler I acquired in August for some curved piecing, and it gave me a new idea for a next workshop, when the new catalogue needs to go to print and I have to come up with a title.

 

please ignore the imperfect center, this was just a sample,
figuring things out that were not given in the instructions that
came with the ruler

So we will pass one more leisurely afternoon here, with a visit from Regine's daughter tonight, and then tomorrow I am heading back home, for a new phase in life beginning on Friday.

Gains and losses

Christmas tends to be a time when new things show up in life, usually in form of presents.
I gave myself a small present already before Christmas, however, in the shape of a mini-machine which I intend to take to workshops, for demonstrations on the stand, and basically just as a backup in case of need. Ever since my old Bernina went up in smoke two years ago and I was then told that there wouldn't be a whole lot of spare parts to get in the future I have been hesitant about what to do, because I don't want to lug the big Bernina around to workshops. So when I saw the offer for a small mechanical elna at 180 Euros I couldn't resist! It arrived by mail.

I do admit, the zebra design is not really my style. But who knows, now that I have much more contact with people from Africa, and really like them, perhaps a bit of zebra in my life is an apt addition!

My husband gave me a new music system for Christmas, which we had first intended for the room where the longarm is positioned. But as this is a much better system than the one I have had in my studio for a long time now, we reconsidered, and put it up in the studio. Unfortunately so far we haven't been able to secure radio reception for my favorite radio station (we don't have cable in the house) and need to fiddle a bit about that. The gain of the new system might mean the loss of a source of information that is not heavily Bavarian-scented, as my favorite station is from outside the Bavarian boundaries. We haven't given up hope yet, though.

The removal of the old system leads to a gain in space in the shelves!

Perhaps a bit of sorting might even increase that effect. If there was time...

And due to mis-assorted thinking on my part we lost a pan and pan-scraper. I managed to turn on the wrong burner when I was trying to make my beloved lemon-ginger-tea and didn't notice for far too long, thinking the strange smell was caused by something burning under the pot.

The pan wasn't exactly new and probably would have needed to be replaced in the near future anyway, and the pan scraper wasn't a special thing either. But I do mourn the loss of the lid, solid and heavy glass. However, after the plastic had melted unter it and with all the black spots on it I just don't want to use it anymore in the process of preparing food that we want to eat. Let's hope this is the only loss of this kind in a while and my absent-mindedness not a serious sign to worry about!

Getting acquainted.

It’s been two months now that I have had my new sewing machine, the Bernina 820. Pretty much right after it arrived I went away for ten days of teaching and selling fabrics. That was followed by a frantic week of dyeing the May-collection of my fabric club. 

Selection for fabric club, May 2012

So I did not really have much time to sit down and try out all those interesting features of the ‘sewing computer’, as it is called in the instruction manual.

Then followed two weeks of our family holiday on the island of Föhr. Basically I did not get around to sitting down and getting to know that new wonder of wonders until just a couple of weeks ago. And what I really would like to do, namely sit down with the instruction manual for a couple of days and work my way through all the different kinds of programmes, is not possible right now, but will have to wait until after the show in Ste. Marie-aux-Mines. So this current stage feels a bit like driving a Porsche without having had more than one driving lesson...

But I am learning. I have completely pieced “Play of Lines XXXI” and was very satisfied with the machine’s performance.

Play of Lines XXXI, before quilting

Although I was a bit worried for a little while because it kept showing me this little picture on the computer screen:

The instruction manual had lots of little pictures listed, but not this particular one. Searching the Bernina website did not help, either, and my Bernina dealer did not reply to my email of inquiry for a number of days. Barbara Lange suggested that it was the indication that the machine had realized that I was using a different foot and that it warned me not to put it into zigzag mode – which must be correct, because I was indeed using the walking foot at that time.

By now I think I have almost figured out how to use the automatic needle threader. The average number of attempts needed for successful threading is slowly going down. Sometimes it does not find the eye of the needle, sometimes it finds the eye, but pulls out the thread again right away when retreating. Sometimes it does work on first try, though.

This past week I have actually embarked on the first major quilting project, finishing Play of Lines XXVIII. This is the quilt that had really sparked the whole machine trouble with the Janome, because the thread had kept breaking. So I was pleasantly surprised at the ease with which free motion quilting progressed on the Bernina. The stitch regulator may need a more intensive phase of experimenting for me to feel as if I have really mastered it, but it worked. No more than three thread breakages on a quilted surface that measures almost six by six feet, can’t complain about that.

In the process of being quilted: Play of Lines XXVIII,
behind the machine

Play of Lines XXVIII, detail

I have made sure to be very good about cleaning out dust from the bobbin case whenever I put in a new bobbing, but after finishing this major free motion quilting project, the machine complained quite a bit and kept telling me that the “lower thread surveillance” had discovererd some error, please check or rewind. Every two to five inches it would beep, flash that little sign, and stop. Can’t count how many times I opened the case, took out the bobbin, cleaned again...

But I finally seem to have got it all out, and then spent another day quilting Play of Lines XXXI, with the walking foot this time. It almost feels like I have entered the finishing straight. Not quite there yet, there are still several other UFOs hanging around which need to get finished before September 13, but I might actually make it.

My sewing machine, quilting and I

I am a dedicated and convinced hand quilter. Unfortunately, my normal days only have 24 hours, and that is by far not enought to deal with all the quilts I want to make by hand. Add to that the fact that I have seen many modern quilts during the last years which were expertly machine quilted, which did contribute to my caving in – I can say these days that machine quilting indeed has its merits for modern quilts. (Still not so sure about those made in a traditional pattern/style, but that’s a different story.) Even for mine! Accordingly, I did decide that it was necessary to improve my machine quilting capacity. The first attempts a few years ago were rather tedious, partly because I stupidly started out with rather huge pieces, on a plain home machine, using my walking foot. Both of these quilts measure more than 180 cm across either way:

Play of Lines VIII -
machine quilted by a beginner, size 185 by 188 cm

Play of Lines X, machine quilted by a beginner, size 203 by 188 cm

For Play of Lines VIII I chose parallel lines all across, which went very well with the three-part-partition of the composition. Play of Lines X was even more of a challenge because I decided on varying patterns in different areas. So I had to deal with figuring out tension issues in free motion quilting. Certainly a huge challenge for my veteran home machine, together we reached our limits, although we did make it. Both of these pieces have been traveling with “Color Improvisations”.

A few smaller quilts followed, with me mostly relying on those parallel lines, which my machine could handle.

But when I began to tire of parallel lines I was a bit at a loss, because of the limitations of my machine. Every time it came to subjecting a finished top to quilting I would fret to myself “well, how I am going to quilt that thing?” When I tried out other patterns than the parallel lines while still using the walking foot, I usually ended up with a lot more threads to sink than I actually cared for. 

At that point I even pondered buying a longarm machine, perhaps taking in commissions to quilt other people’s quilts in order to pay it off. Even went to a business start-up workshop to figure out the necessary business details for such an undertaking. Needless to say, the coach could not even fathom that this might be a possible way (of course, he had never heard of quilting before anyway) and seriously doubted that there would be any possibilities of obtaining a loan to pay for the machine to begin with.... Add to that the fact that around the same time we realized my son would need a room in the house for his drum set, and I certainly did not want to take the risk and start renting additional rooms where I could install a longarm machine which would even have added to the costs.

So I took advantage of the offer for the new Janome Horizon which was launched at the German Quilters’ Guild’s Patchwork Meeting in Dortmund in 2010. Teachers of workshops got an even better offer than the world-launch-offer for visitors of the festival, and it has since become my quilting machine.

Nevertheless, first attempts at free motion quilting offered rather unsatisfying results, again, tension problems. Machine quilting was not liking me – and I was beginning to return to not liking it either.

Meanwhile my Janome and I have been on a wellness-tour together when I took it to the dealer in the Bavarian Forest, about a two-hour drive from here. There the tension was readjusted, and I bought a special bobbin for free motion quilting.

Now that the hardware seems to have been optimized as much as possible, I was totally motivated and decided to start yet another major effort with at my machine quilting by practising practising practising. First, I want to sort of follow the 365-day-free motion filler quilting design project by Leah Day.

I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

Farewell, Daisy!

During my sewing years I have worked on a variety of different types of sewing machines.

The first one was my mother’s machine that she had received as a present upon her wedding, early sixties model. That machine was the production site for my entire Barbie-fashion-collection. At that time I still wanted to become a fashion designer.  This machine was exchanged for a Pfaff later on, which I was allowed to use every once in a while, but it was always made clear that this was not my machine.

An Aunt then gave me an old cabinet sewing machine that which could be run either by foot pedal, or on electricity. It had been in her way and found a place in our cellar. That was not exactly a highly motivating environment for sewing, but as it was not portable it could not easily be brought upstairs to work with, and then returned back. However, for several years the existence of this machine counted as a sufficient argument against the acquisition of my own machine – “You have one downstairs, and you don’t really use it much!”

A few years later I inherited a portable machine left by my great aunt – again an old one, post-war model, very heavy, but with very nice stitches and a purring sound.  It must have been a top model when it was acquired, even featured approximately 30 embroidery stitches, although I never figured out how to change the pattern notches. This was the machine on which I produced my first patchwork pieces.

When my mother acquired a fancy Bernina I was the recipient of her by then older Pfaff and took it with me. By that time it had begun to develop little peculiarities, however, and although I did use it for several years I was never really happy with it. Unfortunately I had been rather quick in passing on the old post-war model, which I really began to regret when the Pfaff turned out to be beyond repair.

That was the time when I decided it was the right moment to finally acquire my very own and new machine. It must have been approximately ten years ago, because I already knew my husband. Because I did not want to have a sewing computer I decided on a Husqvarna “Daisy”. I used this machine a lot, it went with me to my first Nancy Crow workshops, and I really grew attached to it.

Nevertheless, two other machines somehow appeared in my life during the past six years, and Daisy sort of receded into the background. Lately it had only been going with me when I was teaching workshops where I only needed a machine for demonstrations, because it was the easiest machine to be transported. When I heard that a former student of mine was looking for a machine of her own because so far she had been sharing a machine with her mother I immediately thought that that would be a nice place for Daisy. She would be appreciated again, and today we two parted. I was surprised how hard I took the separation, though – probably because it was my very first very own and self-paid machine? It’s not that I am short of sewing machines – I still have two and will always be able to sew on a substitute even while one is being taken care of at the dealers’...

In any case, I wish Daisy and Rabea a lot of fun together. Farewell, Daisy!