Year-End Recap and a New Machine!

Hello! Did you all have a nice Christmas? Ours was alternately quiet and then busy with family - just the perfect mix of down time and fun time. But too much food, even if it was mostly healthy. There are the yummy neighbor gifts, of course. And then the cookies I ended up baking “for Bruce” (well, they were for him, but it’s not like I ignored them....) And even some margaritas. Cousin Kim and I got some sewing time in this week and drank some skinny Margaritas while listening to Jimmy Buffet’s Christmas album, LOL. And they were both surprisingly good!  New Year’s Eve here is just a quiet time with the cats. We do stay up until midnight if for no other reason than all the racket that everyone in the ‘hood makes at midnight!

One fun thing we did is give our oldest Grandson, Easton, his usual Christmas cash. He’s a sophomore in college (nuclear engineering) and any money he gets supplements his earnings from scholarships and working part-time at In-n-Out. But this year we put a different spin on it. I saw a picture on Pinterest where someone had used a 2-pound candy box and put in coins, folded dollar bills (of varying denominations), etc. So, we did the same thing. And then re-wrapped it so it didn’t even look as though it had ever been opened. Seriously, though, the big bills we put into his Christmas card, and the candy box was filled with about $50 in coins and bills. Everyone loved it! He was a bit puzzled at first by the “candy” gift (but infinitely too polite to say anything), but laughed heartily when he opened it.

And here is Easton with his sister Lauren. You may remember that Lauren accompanied her mom and me to Kenya last July.

I was going to combine my recap post for 2018 with a looking-ahead post for 2019, but decided that would be too much. So, I’ll just do the recap here and save the new project introductions for my next post.

Because I’m an organized person for the most part, I use a personal written planner, spreadsheets, and online goal groups (like the Finish-Along and One Monthly Goal) to keep track of my goals and progress on them. Truly, no UFO (UnFinished Object) is left behind in my studio!

In December, I finished All You Need is Love,  a kids’ donation quilt,  two Rainbow selvage quilts, and a table runner.  You’ve seen pictures in previous posts of the quilts, so I’ll spare you. But here is the table runner I made for my friend Terri. It’s similar to the one that I made for us, but these reds and greens are prettier fabric!

Here is a collage of my favorite nine quilts that I made in 2018.

Top, L-R:
AB Baby - a baby quilt for daughter Stacy on the birth of DGD Evie in June
Autumn Sampler, sewn late last year but finished in January
Dancing in September - A Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) quilt of bowtie blocks

Middle, L-R:
Starry, Starry Day - finished in January
Groovy Guitars - finished in August for DH Bruce
All You Need is Love - for daughter Megan, finished in December

Bottom, L-R:
Linked Squares - another RSC quilt finished in August
Exploding Boxes - a RSC quilt finished in November
Orange Lozenges - finished in September

And here is a collage of all my Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts completed this year EXCEPT the two selvage quilts I finished last week. Some of these overlap with my 9 favorites in the above collage.
 

Top L-R:           Pawsitivity 2; Squared Away Sampler; Dancing in September
Middle L-R:      Rainbow Strings; Starry, Starry Day; Geese Migration
Bottom L-R:     Linked Squares; Exploding Boxes, Pawsitivity I

All my quilts are shown in my Quilt Gallery (2012-2018). You can check out the blue link just under the header. I plan to start a new page for Quilts 2019-? this year.

And finally, I’ve been worried for weeks about what I would do for a back-up sewing machine when Bernadette (my Bernina 550QE) went in for her annual spa treatment after Christmas. I do have a friend at Weight Watchers who is also a quilter, and she has a Singer Featherweight (white) that she’s going to sell me - but I won’t see her until January. My poor Kenmore sewing machine is so frail; he was serviced last year and the motor is dying. Bruce said he can replace the motor if we can find a new one, so we’re on the lookout.

So, I took Bernadette in and looked at their trade-ins at the shop yesterday. They had a Brother Innovus (2 years old) - solid state metal insides, not the cheap plastic models they sell to big box retailers. Anyway, it does embroidery (which is NOT a feature I was looking for or even care about) and has a hard case and a soft cover. Also, since its previous owner bought it there and then traded up to a bigger embroidery machine, they offered to continue the remaining 4 years of the original 6 year manufacturer’s warranty. The price? Only $399, and they cleaned and oiled it, threw in a pack of 12 bobbins, a bottle of oil, and a quarter inch foot. Needless to say, it came home with me, and I’ve been sewing happily away on it. It has an automatic thread cutter, which my Bernina doesn’t have AND an automatic needle threader. The Bernina has that, but it’s awful and never ever works for me. Bernina is not known for their needle threading prowess!

What’s with all the Disney crap stuff on the machine? It’s pre-programmed with lots of Disney embroidery designs. Apparently, Brother is the only sewing machine manufacturer licensed with Disney. So, it looks like a kid’s machine, but I so do not care! However, I still have have to name it, LOL. Not a Disney name, though.

So Bruce and I talked, and will still buy the Featherweight. It’s going to be our gift to Cousin Kim, whose Kenmore motor is also failing. Her Kenmore is only 2 years newer than mine (mine is a ’74, hers is a ’76), so they’re both over 40 years old. Now we’ll have two happy endings!!

Have a safe and wonderful New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day! We’ll see you on the other side!!

Linking up to:  Rainbow Scrap Challenge.