Walking foot - Found!

 Found my Walking foot yesterday! Before I tried to use the Ditch foot to quit my String Quilt I decided to have one last look for my Walking foot. I had quickly looked for a replacement one on Amazon and was horrified at the price - over £54! My intention was to phone my Sewing Machine repairer today and see if he could find me one at a cheaper price. The one I couldn’t find cost me just over £11 in 2011!

About seven years ago I was gifted another Janome machine that had belonged to my friend Margaret’s sister who had died and Margaret was sorting out her belongings. It has been my emergency machine for when my other one was being serviced and I have used it a few times. When I found the empty Walking foot box on Saturday I read the note inside, written by me, which said the Walking foot was on Mary’s machine. I discarded the message because it didn’t make sense to me, I couldn’t ever remember putting it on Mary’s machine! Although I did remember thinking about doing that and keeping it permanently on Mary’s machine to save me the trouble of struggling to fit it on my machine every time I want to do some machine quilting. Anyway, yesterday, as one final attempt to find the Walking foot I looked at Mary’s machine and lo and behold, there it was!

So I swapped out the machines and happily quilted my String Quilt.

Senior moments and Blue RSC round up

 September has been a difficult month for me: health issues for me and ongoing investigations and sudden decline of my dear sister who so sadly died ten days ago. At odd times I have done some sewing, not much, but it is a distraction from thoughts whirling around my head.

Today I decided I was going to do a round up of blue RSC projects.

Firstly, the blue Crumb Coin Quilt flimsy never got basted. I did make a pieced backing and laid them aside.

But I did revisit Cathy ( Crazy by Design blog) and found an idea for using my blue String blocks - not all of them though.  I had a pretty chunk of elephant fabric bought years ago at Spotlight in Nelson, New Zealand which needed to be used. So I cut it into 5.5” squares the same size as the String blocks, added a few yellow String blocks for added zing and I’m happy with the flimsy which measures 36” x 40”.  Just one elephant square leftover for scrap stash. 

A few days later I sewed together two leftover pieces of a great backing fabric ( only scraps left now). It’s an all over pattern so I just sewed, didn’t even think of trying to match. This afternoon I basted it and hope to machine quilt it tomorrow. I also made a scrappy binding from leftover strips of blue and green binding pieces.

A couple of days ago I joined a lot of leftover strips of blue binding ready to bind the blue Crumb Coins flimsy. I had already made the pieced backing so my next job was to baste that one.

Enter Senior Moment.......... could I find the flimsy???? I remembered ironing it and laying it on the bed in my Sewing room but the only thing there was the backing folded carefully in half so it didn’t trail on the carpet. Well I hunted for ages and then  for some unknown reason picked up the backing. There was the flimsy, carefully laid on top of the backing and folded inside it! I have cut the wadding but that’s now on hold. I had lost patience.

Next job was to sew the scrappy blue binding onto the finished Zebra and elephant Medallion quilt.  Decided to use the long blue scrappy binding strip for this too. Now I needed to fix the Walking Foot to my machine, a job I hate as it’s so fiddly, sometimes I do it straight away, sometimes takes half an hour of frustration. 

I keep this in a bag in the bottom drawer of my sewing table. Enter second Senior Moment.

Bag was there, empty Walking foot box was there, no Walking foot. I spent ages searching and then decided I would just order another from Amazon - life’s too short - but I did want to get that binding on so I risked using the ordinary machine foot and it seems OK. Phew!

Final thing done this afternoon was to baste the blue String quilt so that’s ready for machine quilting. As I can’t find my Walking foot I’ve decided to quilt this in the ditch with a Ditch quilting foot I bought a few years ago and wasn’t a hit with me. So that’s tomorrow’s  potential frustration! Off to order that replacement Walking foot from Amazon!

Linking up with Angela’s so Scrappy RSC 2022 blog. 

A blue RSC flimsy and more String blocks

 Blue is the September colour for RSC so I have taken the opportunity to make a Coin Crumb flimsy from finished 4.5”  Boyish Crumb blocks alternated with blue fabrics. I used a blue check fabric I bought on sale years ago for all the sashing and in the process finished every scrap of it! 

There are some interesting snippets of fabrics in the top, good for I Spy.

I sorted out all my small strings and scraps and made 8 more Blue 5.5” String blocks. 

My box of string blocks is very full so I sorted them into colours and discovered I now have 38 Blue ones so I’m going to look back over some photos I have of String blocks quilts designs and perhaps next week I can put together another flimsy? Cathy at Crazy by Design has made lots of lovely String Quilts so I’m going to have a look through her blog posts for some ideas!

Hoping to baste the Coin Crumb flimsy this afternoon.

Linking up with Angela’s SoScrappy RSC 2022 blog.