The Sewing Mom

As you know, I’ve been working on a quilt top using Breast Cancer Awareness fabrics that, when completed, will be donated to my daughter’s high school softball team to be raffled off. The money raised will be donated to the Susan G Komen Foundation. I finished piecing the top and mailed it, along with backing fabric, to my sister Karen. She has my mom’s longarm quilter and offered to do the quilting for me which saves me a TON of time!

She sent me these photos of the quilting she did and I think it looks fabulous, don’t you?!

This post brought to you by Bulbs. Dig, Drop, Done.. All opinions are 100% mine.

Have you ever planted flower bulbs?  I have and they have the best payoff of anything I’ve ever planted!  Our previous home up north had a small tree in the front yard outlined by brick and bark mulch at the bottom.  It was so incredibly boring, so I planted a circle of daffodils and a larger circle of tulips around the base of the tree.  Every spring, sometimes while there was still snow on the ground, I would find them growing up out of the ground and before I knew it, breaking into beautiful yellow and red flowers.  It was like an annual gift I had given to myself!

I haven’t yet planted any bulbs here in Texas for a couple of reasons.  Obviously, the weather here is quite different and I haven’t been too sure about what types of bulbs are best to plant here.  Also, we have a gazillion squirrels and rabbits here and I don’t want them stealing my bulbs!

Good news!  I learned to visit www.digdropdone.com to learn more and to use their Garden Guru tool to find what bulbs are right for planting in my area.  It’s super easy to use, just choose your country, then your area, pick the type of bulb and then check the planting guide  that shows how to plant your bulbs.  This is a screenshot of my personalized planting guide if I choose to plant hyacinths.

If you’ve never planted bulbs, its super simple.  Seriously, it’s digging a small hole, dropping in the bulb and covering the hole up with dirt.  Done!  You can visit www.digdropdone.com to learn more information and watch videos for great ideas using bulbs. I personally enjoyed Marcy’s idea for growing bulbs in pots as her sons science project, great idea!  Although, Evelyn reminded me that daffodils are pretty animal tolerant, in other words, they’re not tasty to critters.

Bulbs make great gifts too.  My mom was given an amaryllis bulb ijn a pot several years ago and every year, that amaryllis blooms beautifully for all of us to enjoy.

If the ease of planting bulbs isn’t enough to entice you, how about a contest at Curbside Chaos that is paying $5,000 for a yard makeover! Just like bulb planting, it’s easy to enter, just submit a photo of your yard! The lucky winner will get the yard makeover plus a visit from Taniya Nayak (@TaniyaNayak on Twitter)who will provide the winner with tips for updating their yard along with ways to incorporate bulbs into the landscaping.

Plus, because the contest is an effort to educate people on the beauty of bulbs, for every share on Twitter, “Bulbs. Dig, Drop, Done.” will donate $1.00 to Rebuilding Together – the nation’s leading nonprofit, working to preserve affordable homeownership and revitalize communities.

If you think you’ve never seen a flower that came from a bulb, think again.  Just look up at my blog header, those are tulips, my favorite flower.  Yes, tulips come from bulbs!

My last post got me to thinking about sewing machines. I have personally ever owned 2 sewing machines in my entire life. The first one is a Singer (I still have it) that I received from my parents as a gift when I graduated from high school. It’s a great machine and I have to admit, I used that one machine for over 25 years before getting my current machine which is a Husqvarna Viking, which not only sews, but also does embroidery.

When I first got the Viking, I did a lot of embroidery and really truly enjoyed it. The problem with it developed when we moved from Illinois to Texas 5 years ago and my embroidery design software has been lost ever since. So, I can currently only embroider items that I have a design for. My computer totally crashed about a year ago so the software that was saved on it was deleted in the crash and I have no access to any of it unless by some stroke of luck, I find the cd-rom. After 5 years of looking, I’d say the probability of that is pretty low.

It would be difficult for me to say which is the >best sewing machine, there are feature of both that I really like. As I stated in my previous post, my Viking does not let me know when the bobbin has run out of thread and that is super annoying. My Singer not only told me the bobbin was empty, but also would wind the bobbin thread while the bobbin was till in the bobbin case, I never had to take it out! I REALLY liked that. My Viking has a lot more decorative stitches which I use a lot when I’m creating purses, but as far as basic sewing, they both do a great job.

Believe it or not, I have my eye on another machine which is also a Viking. It’s designed more for quilting and has a larger (longer) bed to allow for more fabric to be on the right side of the sewing needle. I also really like it because it has a scissor cutting feature that automatically cuts the threads for you when you stop sewing. It has several other features on it that come in handy when sewing larger projects like quilt tops, but, it comes at a hefty price, the reason it’s still on my wish list. Someday, I will have it, but not right now.

If the manufacturers would do something about the bobbin feature, I’d be a heck of a lot happier!

What’s your favorite machine?

I really enjoy sewing and have a very nice sewing machine. I do have a pet peeve with my machine though and that’s the fact that it doesn’t bother to let me know when my bobbin thread has run out of thread.

I know you wouldn’t think that’s a big deal, but today, while sewing on a 67 inch long border to a quilt top, unbeknownst to me, my bobbin ran out of thread. So, after putting 67 inches of fabric through my machine, only 3 inches were actually sewn together which meant, I basically had to do it all over again. Of course, I had to load the bobbin with thread first!

Ok, done with this vent and by the way, my quilt top is finished! I will post a picture tomorrow (hopefully!).