Good Things Come in Small Packages!

My feet arrived yesterday! A brand new set of Babylock Imagine serger feet. See, see, see!!!

Here's the bummer for today. DD#2 has to go on a college visit so there probably won't be any time to play with them. I'm so sad about that. To get my sewing "fix", I'll just have to settle for staring at the box.

Bye Bye, UFOs!

I loathe unfinished sewing projects. They languish for months, sometimes years, just waiting to be finished. When there are so many more interesting things to do and sew, it just prolongs to project almost to neverending UFO status. However, I am happy to report that two UFOs have achieved finished status: a kitchen table cloth that was begging for a rolled edge (yes, at least I can honestly say I was waiting for my new serger and followed through with that one) and my niece's baby quilt that I started in November of 2010. She was born in October of 2010 so it really is an embarrassingly late gift. Here are pics of the front and back of the quilt. There are a couple of reasons why it was so late, the latter one blaming the Internet of which I'll explain below.
Two days ago I picked up my great niece's baby quilt. One that I started last November. We knew it was going to be a girl so I picked up some nice baby quilt fabric on sale at fabric.com. Hot pink cotton flannel and a super soft tie-dye Minky. When those arrived, I took a trip to my local quilting shop to look at their cottons and found a nice yellow one to match the two fabrics. Then I spent another 4 weeks mulling over designs at emblibrary.com. For a while my embroidery machine was smokin', I stitched the designs and quilting fabric together for the front of the quilt, then I stopped. Why? Because I read something on the Internet lol. (That really is the truth!) Maybe I was at PR, but talk turned to quilt backing and someone was thinking about using a knit. Of course, I was using a knit, too, as the backing for my quilt. A few quilters chimed in about how it was a bad idea to use knit fabric as a backing. So what happened? It kind of stopped me dead in my tracks. Doubts creeped in. Maybe using Minky wasn't such a good idea. After all, I'm no quilter. Truthfully, I don't like to quilt, have never really done quilting other than a few specialty projects, and don't sew traditional quilts with fat quarters or anything like that. So that's when the quilt began to languish in my sewing cart.

For many months I thought about the backing. Maybe I could do this, maybe do that, then two days ago I just got fed up. Perhaps I simply got mad that the quilt was taking up so much space in my cart, but I said to myself, "I don't care what people use for their backing. I don't care about quilting naysayers that say knit fabrics shouldn't be used for the backing. I'm going to do it my way, and it's going to turn out great!

""Internet Paralysis" be damned.

So I did it MY way. And you know what? It turned out perfect. The quilt front is made out of quilting cotton and flannel, the back is super soft Minky, and two layers of quilt batting are sandwiched between both. I was going to make my own binding but decided to buy Wrights binding instead to save me some time and finish the project.

This project is one of those kind of lessons for me. Think of what I would do pre-Internet. And that would be just about anything. No one to ever say, "You shouldn't do it that way...That is not recommended...(blah, blah, blah...)" So there you go! I put in my virtual ear plugs, did it my way, and it turned out great!

Happy and Bummed.

It was a GREAT day! I was very happy to spend time making some winter hats for my oldest daughter's sorority Thanksgiving dinner. The service project component is a "Mitten Tree" with the families attending bringing a food item for the dinner and a winter accessory for the tree.

So far I made two hats and a scarf. I'm hoping to make a pair of mittens tomorrow because it is, after all, called a "Mitten Tree", right?

And do you know what I used??? Yes! My new Babylock Imagine!!! It made quick work out of the hats. Well, it would have been quicker if I remembered to leave a long serger strand down the braid portions of the braid hat. It was on my mind to do it to turn the tubes quickly but I forgot. And let me tell you, it takes forever to turn a fleece tube with my fingers. I have this one Dritz gadget for turning tubes but it never works well for me. Someday the Fastturn Tube Turner set will be mine! The fleece used was 100 weight from Wazoodle. I don't know who the manufacturer is, but I love that fleece. So soft, anti-pill, and it looks great wash after wash.

I had my three machines out too--My Janome sewing and coverstitch machines, in addition to the Imagine. What a trio. It would have been a nice touch to embroider the hats but they have to be generic.

It would have been great to make a new dress with my serger for the dinner, but there is simply no time. Looking forward to squeezing in some play time during the next week.

Ohhh...I'm getting so excited to play with the accessory feet soon. I've been watching the Imagine DVD and those extra feet are amazing. It's just so quick to do on the serger. More later, I'm out of time. That's the bummer to my post. There's never enough time to play. :(

Help Wanted! Flatlocking on BL Imagine.

(I posted this on PR but am going to link back to my blog because of errors when trying to link from Photobucket to PR.)

I just got my new Babylock Imagine and have playing with it the past two days. All the stitches were beautiful except for the 2-thread Flatlock, both seaming and decorative. I'm using white serger thread in the needle and Decorator 6 and Wooly Nylon thread in the looper.

Although I will try the flatlock again with serger thread in both the needle and looper. If it looks good, then I'm thinking some adjusting might need to be done with the screw. I thought I ask for tips and tricks first, however, before doing that from Imagine owners.

Here are pics of what it looks like. The top is the purple wooly nylon, the bottom green is Decorator 6. The ladder stitches on the needle side are beautiful, but the opposite side is not. The needle thread is being pulled too much to the other side.


Any tips for using decorative thread in the BL Imagine serger would be greatly appreciated!

***ETA*** I will hang my head low in shame. I found out in my how-to-use-your-new-machine BL class that I was forgetting to put my foot down, no pun intended. This is a no-brainer, of course, but on my BL I couldn't tell that the foot was up like a sewing machine. The foot appears so close either way. I usually don't raise the foot on a serger, but was doing so a lot because of the thickness of my fabrics, then I was forgetting to put it down lol. How dumb is that?!?! Anyway...this has solved my stitch problem.

Another issue the instructor noticed that my stitches were "off". They weren't like everyone else's in the class. She had the super tech at the store check it out before I left and it was off by a whole turn which is quite a lot according to the owner. Yes, it was a brand new machine right from the box, so someone wasn't paying attention at the factory.

Everything is good now :) .

Imagine That!!!

Yes! "Imagine" that!!!

It happened. My baby came home with me last night. It took 18 mos of payments, but she is now here. (Put a napkin under your chin right now...) She sure is droolworthy:

Told ya so :) . Finish wiping the drool off your chin and I'll tell you my little issue. I started taking her out of the box today and there doesn't appear to be a cover! Maybe it is under the machine??? I don't know. But if there is no cover, shame on BL. For a top-of-the-line home serger, it should include at least a cheapo plastic cover, don't you think? I know, I know. With my new baby I can whip one up fast but... Even my Janome Embroidery machine which cost almost as much came with a sturdy plastic cover. Ditto with my Janome Coverstitch. Oh well. I ended up putting it back in the box because leaving it out without a cover is an invitation to my 2 highly curious cats. Play with me not. I really wanted to take it out for 10 minutes to stare at it, then put a cover on it for playtime later.

Darn, I had to put it back in the box. I'd really like to work tomorrow, but I really don't want to work tomorrow if you KWIM. No work means time for my Imagine!

More updates later. I'm still staring at the Imagine box sitting under my kitchen table. Proud to be its owner :) . Proud to have it home! My "family" is pretty much complete: Janome Memory Craft sewing machine, Janome CP1000 Coverstitch, Janome 300E Embroidery, Babylock Imagine serger, and a vintage Kenmore 185 series mechanical sewing machine as my backup. What more could a girl want? Well, a professional, heavy-duty dedicated buttonhole machine might be nice!

Pictures for Ginger

The nice thing about PR are the reviews and pics. The bad thing about PR is that lots of members (including myself) have broken links due to various things like changing service providers.

Note: Most of these tops are old. Now I wear my tees snug or close-fitting. It's simply a more flattering look. Each photo is a Pamela Tee or Pamela Tank. Some have undergone major design changes like the dress. I still wear those on hot summer days. The plain grey was a muslin I created in the former Shannon Gifford's Build a Better Tee class.

The New Blogger Interface

Has anyone tried it yet? I hated it and switched back. 'Nuff said about it.