Wrapping up the Rainbow

As I write this (Friday evening), it’s snowing. Now that is not necessarily unusual here in the Salt Lake Valley at the end of April, but I’m just a bit paranoid; did we miss summer? It’s been raining and slushing all week. I’m sure that if my garden could talk, it would be saying (and here I paraphrase...) "What the Heck?!" The cats have stopped shedding (for now), the furnace is still running, soup is sounding good for dinner, and quilts - well, they always sound good. To console ourselves, we’ve been watching a BBC series on Netflix about the South Pacific. Bonus: it’s narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch. (If you don’t know who he is, it’s time to sell that rock you’re living under, LOL).

We have come to the end of our multi-colored/rainbow scraps for the month of April. Our intrepid leader, Angela of So Scrappy, is again hosting another linky lineup of scrappy fabric goodness. It’s so much fun to see what our online quilting friends have been up to!

So this was my creative week. First, I finished up the pastel rainbow baby quilt from my vintage sheet scraps. It finished at 42x42”. It’s hard to get a good picture of a pastel quilt. I quilted it with simple straight line cross hatch. Well, MOSTLY straight lines, hehe. This will be a donation quilt.

Next I took an afternoon to work in some bright, multi-colored cat-themed scraps and quilted up 6 cat quilts (roughly placemat sized) for Best Friends Animal Shelter. The picture includes one I made from the leftover fabric of my bee-themed baby quilt, so there are 7 kitty quilts altogether.  Most of them are from my precious Laurel Burch scraps.

My Flower Market quilt finally came together, and much more easily than I thought it would. The borders worked out perfectly! I actually like the finished quilt.  It measures 61x72”.

Sorry I have to keep taking pictures of finished quilts up on my design board. I`d sure love a sunny day so we could get outside. Anyway, the back is a yummy black print with white and pink flowers and little white polka dots. It is my favorite print of the line. And the binding is a diagonal black and white stripes because Stripes.Are.The.Best.

This is also my Goal #1 for my Finish Along Goals for Second Quarter, list HERE.

Now, let’s take a look at what got done in April in the name of Rainbow Scrap Challenge, shall we?

Surprisingly to me, I completed 72 multi-colored blocks. Of those, 43 went into the Scrap X+plosion quilt (42 on the front and one on the back), then there were 16 quarter log cabins (upper right in collage), and 13 4.5” bowties blocks (center bottom). I also did one rainbow baby quilt, 7 rainbow kitty quilts and 2 rainbow doggie beds. (Had to correct myself there; I first typed doggie bags).  So, it was a very productive month, which proves how crappy our weather has been because everything happened INDOORS.

And finally, I finished the top (only had to trim and add borders) of the Big Game Quilt that I’m making for our DSIL (daughter Emily’s husband) who has returned temporarily from his overseas assignment for the USAF. He has a month leave of absence, during which he is taking a special class and setting up for his new posting and training beginning in July (in nearby Colorado!!) He will go back overseas for about six weeks and then be stateside for good. So, I wanted to give him his Christmas present for 2016 since he was overseas) while he`s here. We’ll finally get to spend some time with the whole sweet family next week!!

This quilt is a printed design panel from Pattern Jam, just like the one I did at Christmas for my other DSIL, only a different color way. This time I was able to pick out the fabrics and colors. The printing has improved dramatically - I can’t believe how crisp and bright the colors are! The two borders were added by me yesterday, and the backing is the same navy blue and green plaid fabric of the outer border. I think even the binding will be the same. That was a great purchase at Connecting Threads for $2.96 per yard.

Not much else is new around here. Bruce may go back to work next week part-time. We’ll see; he will need to pull his nose out of a book long enough to call and arrange it!

Workin’ on a Scrap Gang....

Do you remember the sixties song “Workin’ on a Chain Gang” by Sam Cooke?? He was so awesome! Listen here or just remember..... you’re welcome for the ear worm.  Anyway, that’s been my theme song while sewing this week. The more we sew - and I sew a lot - the more scraps we seem to accumulate. I also spent lots of time this week (but not nearly enough) outside pulling weeds, working on the Weed Gang. But it’s all good. That is, the sewing is good. The weeds, well, I’m hoping I can bribe some high schooler to come pull weeds for $$$ this summer.

So what did I get done this week on my Scrap Gang Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects? A lot, actually. After finishing Scrap X+plosion last week, I continued working on my quarter log cabins until I was nearly out of multi-colored scraps.

I made 16 blocks. There are no current plans for them; they’ll just reside in the Parts Department until a use comes along. The blocks measure 6.5” each and all have a purple starting square. I have no idea why I picked purple. Anyway, the few scraps that remain were either thrown into the stuffing bag (if they were small) or returned to the scrap basket, which is now an echo chamber of near-nothingness.

And I had so much stuffing in my stuffing bag, (scraps of fabric and batting that would normally go into the trashcan) that I decided to make a couple doggie beds from the pattern by Vickie Welsh. It used all the stuffing that I’ve saved for the last couple months. The fabric is some that I still had in my home dec fabric tub from which I used to make purses and aprons. They rather fit the multi-colored theme this month, don’t they? I guarantee their stuffing contents certainly do! These doggie beds will be added to the cat and small dog quilts I make every month for the Best Friends animal shelter.

And then I made a quick baby quilt from the fabrics left over from a previous baby quilt made a couple years ago. Nothing particularly exciting, but it was fun to get the bits together into some kind of cohesive design.

Another fun part for me was using the quilt to practice quilting free motion flowers. I also did random loops to imitate the bee flight paths shown in the yellow bee fabric.  I can now safely add flowers to my quilting “repertoire”, such as it is.

But there was still more week left....... so I put on my thinking cap and realized I still had a bag of multi-colored scraps left over from my last vintage sheet quilt, Rainbow Rails.  I sorted them out and there were enough multi-colored pastel florals and stripes to make another baby quilt.  So, I cut them into 6” squares and used 42 to make a quilt top.

The picture doesn’t do justice to the soft colors. I was also able to cut out 42 squares of blue-purple-green vintage sheet fabrics for my cousin Kim, who needs to do a quick boy baby quilt.. And, I believe there are enough pink and orange and yellow scraps to get one or possibly even two more baby quilts cut. I`ll deal with those when we get to either one of those colors in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Bruce and I went to JoAnn Fabrics this week. He is finally driving again, and it is so nice! I got some sewing machine needles with a 50% off coupon, some American Girl doll clothes patterns (on sale for $1.99 each) to make some more cute doll clothes for my DGD Abbie, and I also bought a cheap poly batt for the donation baby quilt. It was, like $5, so it convinced me that I shouldn’t cut into my good, wide roll of batting.

And then I couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to get back to my Flower Market quilt and making the borders. I got all the flying geese made and trimmed and there are just enough to make the border around the quilt -  IF I use cornerstones. I checked through my scraps and there were 4 black floral print squares already cut and waiting. Meant to be!

So, I hope to have two quilt finishes this coming week, and then I can start on the cat quilts for the shelter. I’d like to make about eleventy thousand of them; enough to justify another trip to the shelter to unload them and the two doggie beds. Yep, this is life in the fast lane, I tell ya.......

Have a great week!
Linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Goals for Quarter 2 Finish-Along

It’s time to post and link our list of proposed UFO finishes for the 2nd quarter of the year. I love setting my quarterly goals with the 2017 Finish Along ladies! There is nothing more satisfying than finishing a goal (UFO - unfinished object - sewing or crafting goal) and crossing it off the list. Plus, each finish is an opportunity to be included in fantastic prize drawings. There are no real quilt police making us work on these, just a fun group that lets us set up possible goals - as many or as few as we want.

And now, here are my second quarter goals. I’ve got 7 of them this quarter, just like last quarter. I finished 6 out of 7 last quarter, and am carrying over the Flower Market quilt. So let’s start with that.

1.  Flower Market
EDITED TO ADD:  FINISHED! Blogged about HERE.

All I have left to sew on this one are two borders, but one is a chevron border made of waste HSTs from cutting the main blocks.  Once that’s done, it just needs to be quilted and bound.

2.  Crayon Quilt.

EDITED TO ADD: FINISHED and blogged about HERE.

I have several ongoing Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects, and this Crayon Quilt (Color Me by Emily Herrick) was one I started last year. Because I don’t want to finish all my RSC projects in the same month, I am choosing to finish this one early. Currently I have about 5 blocks (crayons) made and need 6-7 or so more.

3.  Flag Quilt

FINISHED AND BLOGGED ABOUT HERE.

I made one extra block last year as a signature block for a Lori Holt Retreat. And now I have all the pieces cut out for the rest of the quilt It would be great to finish up this patriotic quilt this quarter so I can have it ready to use on the 4th of July!!

4.  Let it Snow

This is a cute pattern by Heather Mulder Peterson. I got it to about the halfway point last Christmas season, but had to put it aside to finish all my Christmas quilting obligations. I would like to finish this early this year, because I have at least one more Christmas quilt I’d like to make later on in the year as well as a tree skirt. (Note: I am still using my first-ever patchwork piece, a red, green and gold patched and yarn-tied tree skirt that I made in 1980. We have used it every single year since then. It has a big red ruffle around it and was vintage two decades ago, LOL!!  I really need a new one).

I will probably add an extra border or two to this, or more trees, as the pattern makes it more of a large wall hanging and I would rather have a quilt.

5.  Farm Girl Quilt.

All the blocks - and then some - are made. Gee, I must have 55 or more twelve-inch blocks. Yes, I’ll probably have to do some streamlining. Maybe make 2 Farm Girl quilts??  They need to be sashed and sewn into a flimsy, then quilted and bound. But the hardest part will be selecting and placing the blocks.

6.  Mad Scraps X+ Quilt.
EDITED TO ADD:  FINISHED!  Blogged about HERE.

I just started this one a couple days ago using my basket of multi-colored scraps. Well, to be honest, I have thrown in a single-colored chunk here and there for variety.  These are 10-inch blocks, and I’m not yet sure if I want 30 blocks (for a 5x6 setting) or 42 blocks (for a 6x7 setting). We’ll see what the scraps have to say about it.

7.  Big Game Quilt.
EDITED TO ADD;  FINISHED! Blogged about HERE.

This is another pattern by Emily Herrick, and the custom top was made for me by Pattern Jam. I did one of these for one of my sons-in-law last Christmas, and the other SIL then wanted one too!  So, this is for Chad, and I will give it to him in June since he was stationed out of the country for last Christmas.

And that is my list. I am continuing to make about 6-7 monthly small kennel quilts (I call them quilt-lets) for the Best Friends no-kill animal shelter here in Salt Lake City. They are for the cats and small dog who are adopted out. The quiltlets are small, ranging from 12x18” up to 20x24”. I think of them as big placemats, LOL! And once the assembly line is set up, I can whip them all out in a matter of a couple hours. Last Monday I delivered 21 quilts that I made in the first quarter, and it made my day!!



PS
For more details on the 2017 Quilt Along, or to see all the lovely projects that others are working on, click on the Finish Along button in my right sidebar or go HERE.

Putting the RAINBOW in Rainbow Scrap Challenge

TGIA. Thank God it’s April!!  Although I usually love March (spring starts and it's my birthday month), this year it was hard. Regular readers know about DH’s latest medical issue, and  I`m pleased to say that on Tuesday the 4th he will have his final surgery to detach his right forearm from his abdomen (sounds weird, I know). Then he can finally heal and start physical therapy to regain the use he’s lost in his arm and hand over the last six weeks of operations. But he has his arm and full function! YAY!!! They will monitor him closely every couple months for signs of cancer recurrence. I mean really, who gets cancer in their FOREARM? We know there is a chance that some cancer may remain - and they’ll radiate the questionable area just in case. So it’s all good for now.

But let’s talk about fabric and quilting and sewing. This month, Angela who heads up our Rainbow Scrap Challenge and hosts the weekly linkup (join us HERE), has chosen RAINBOW (multicolor) for the April color. What that means is that we get to use all those fabric scraps we have that don’t fit into a specific color category; mixed fabrics that contain this and that and defy classification. I have a lot of those prints - florals, Asian-inspired fabrics, multi-colored chevron or plaid or stripes. Novelty fabrics. Whew. This is what my basketful looked like:

Starting the sort by value:

Since rainbow blocks don’t fit my usual ongoing 2017 projects, I decided to make a scrappy quilt (or 2 if there’s enough fabric) of these babies. But what to do? First I decided the quilt needed to meet a few criteria:

1.  No HSTs.  I do enough of those darn things in my regular blocks. I need a break!
2.  Must use all values; bright, dark, light, pastel
3.  Pattern must allow all fabrics to play together yet provide contrast and interest.

That was a tall order, but I keep a lot of quilt idea boards on my Pinterest, and found the perfect quilt that I had pinned from Wanda at Exuberant Color.  (March, 2013).

These are 10-inch blocks and each one uses four fabrics/values and flip triangles instead of HSTs, although there is no reason that it can’t use even more in a given block. I am so stoked!!!  So, I hope to have several blocks or a half quilt to show you next week!  And speaking of quilts to show, since last month was red and I had some old red and white fabric, I made a little donation baby quilt. I the flimsy last week, but here it is done and quilted in all its relative blandness (and pinned badly to my design board):

I fixed up the wonky border on the left after I took the picture, so it’s nice and neat now. It finished at 42x38”, and my friend Terri has a charity she donates baby quilts to, so she will take this one off my hands. Oh, the binding? Some old Christmas fabric (see below) because..... why not?

I’ve also been working on a couple other things. If you haven’t seen my finished Rainbow Dresdens, visit the last post (click “older post”, below, or visit my Quilt Gallery page, link above).  Once Rainbow Dresdens and the red baby quilt were done, it was back to working on Flower Market, where I am still trimming up HSTs for a border. These are the two possibilities - a chevron style or diamonds. Excuse their wonkiness; I’m still trimming...

Which one do you like better??

Have a great week!

A Red-Letter Day for Scraps

Lots of red to show here today, and I’m not talking about surgical wounds, LOL.  Lots of sewing happened this week as I tried to keep myself calm over DH’s surgeries and getting rid of that four-letter word, Cancer.

Before I show my scraps, I just want to shout from the rooftops that the doctor called today and the results show one site in his arm is now totally cancer-free. YAY!  The second site has a small area still, and that will be removed when the 2 doctors (orthopedic oncology surgeon and plastic surgeon) team up on Tuesday to do the reconstruction and skin grafts. AND THEN HE CAN JUST HEAL!!!!! YAY!!!! The weight of the world is now off our shoulders!

Ahem. Now I will attempt to regain some composure here.  ;-)

For lots of Red Goodness of the Scrappy Fabric Variety, why not join us over at Angela’s Scrappy Saturday linky party?

First up, 13 blocks of 6.5” crosses.

Next, two Geese Migration blocks.

And then there are my little favorites, the 4” bow-tie blocks, 24 of them. Take a bow, bows!

I also sewed up a column of red for my selvage quilt. The red column has 5 selvage blocks (4.5 x 8.5” each) and 4 plain red pieces of the same size. This is the only picture I had of it. It’s hard to photograph just one long column, so it’s hanging out with some of its red friends, LOL.

This month I won’t be doing the usual 4 red strip blocks, because I have them already made from last year. But still to go are the 2-3 red Bookshelf blocks and my Friendship Star Variation blocks. I can’t wait.

In my last post earlier this week (in case you missed it) I showed my finished 2016 RSC quilt made of 16-patch blocks. Just hit “Older Posts” at the bottom of the page, or click the Gallery link, above. I also finished piecing the blocks on my Flower Market quilt, and have added the first border. Now I'm fiddling with waste HSTs from the original piecing and squaring and pairing them up to make either a chevron border or a diamond border with them. I`ll probably be asking for your opinion on those next week.

This week I bought a lot of new fabric, too. Some of it is for an art quilt for Bruce. The subject is guitars (he plays and loves them. Luckily he will still be able to play them!!) The quilt will be in bright batiks and the pattern is Groovy Guitars by Robbi Joy Ecklow. On the schedule for this summer/fall.

But I have to show you this fabric. Cats. Actually, it’s Tabby Lane by Tula Pink. I like Tula’s designs because they are NOT too matchy-matchy. And I can still fall victim to that problem every now and then (Olive’s Flower Market, I’m looking at YOU!) Aren’t these cute??

So this time I bought a few half yard or full yard pieces of selected favorites, to go together or separately. I can’t wait to use some of it to make a quilt for myself, or for the kitties...... Actually, I can make LOTS of kitty quilts for the Best Friends shelter I donate to. Don’t you just loooooove those tuna cans??  And how good would these brights look paired up with black and white? Mmmm...

Today the grandkids are visiting, well 7 out of 8 of the youngest. On Monday I’ll see my grandson Easton (at 17, he’s the oldest) when he comes over to try on his Jedi Knight costume I`m sewing up for him. There is a ComicCon in town later this month and he’s going. Maybe we`ll get a picture of him in costume.

Finally, thank you all so much for your best wishes and thoughts for Bruce during his arm cancer scare. And for those of you who've prayed, your prayers have been appreciated too, more than you can ever know. These last few weeks have been rough on us, but we have been constantly buoyed up by your emails. As internet friends, I know we don’t know each other in person, but so many of us have gotten to know each other online over the weeks and months and years. Such a great camaraderie between quilters! You, dear ladies, are true friends and wonderful people. Thank you.

Have a great week! I know we will....

Time To Total the Teal (‘Till Tuesday)

I’ve finished with my teal scraps for February for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC). Don’t forget, however, that we will be showing off our Rainbow Scrap quilt finishes (if any) on Tuesday, the last day of this month. In the meantime, however, check out Angela’s So Scrappy blog for the RSC work for this week - always lots of great eye candy.

As always, I make a collage of my blocks to make it easier on me and you. For Teal February, I made 13 Friendship Star variation blocks (big picture). Then, from top right down and around the corner: 2 Geese Migration blocks, 2 bookcase blocks, 13 plus blocks, 1 slab o’ crumbs (actually was 3 blocks, but I count them as one). Also in that picture are 2 nine-patches and a miscellaneous pieced block featuring an old fashioned telephone.

Moving along we have: 4 strip blocks, a crayon block, a teal column of selvages and teal pieces (8 separate little blocks, but I count the column as 1) and finally 20 bow-tie blocks.  That grand total for February is 60 blocks. My teal scraps are history.

Now, you may remember (or not) that I set myself a goal of making 6 kennel quilts (12x18” each, or larger) for our local Best Friends Animal Rescue, which uses them for cats and small dogs. In January I made 5, and I was able this month to make 7, totaling 12. So, I am back on track! One quilt has already been given to my cousin Kim, whose family owns (or is owned by) 3 cats. One of them is a wizened old senior who likes to lay on top of the water heater tank to keep warm. So, he got a quilt to soften his perch and ease his bones. Here is a picture of the remaining 11 quilts (they’re stacked somewhat, so you probably can’t see them all).

The blue fabric was part of a gift of cat fabric given to me by my friend Terri for Christmas. The gold stars (and you’ll be seeing lots more of that, I can promise) was a donation from a local quilt shop. The rest is from my stash; old small blocks and lots of other cat/animal prints. I shouldn’t have to buy any fabric for this project for the rest of the year. Or two.

Some of our grandkids came for a visit on President’s Day since there was no school.  I have a cute wooden wall hanging made by our daughter Emily that says GRANDKIDS, with clothespins below for clipping school pictures. Well, just try to get your adult kids to remember to give you school pix of the grands! Besides, several of the grands aren’t even old enough to be in school yet. So, I snapped some candids while they were here.

TOP (L-R): Deacon, Gunner      BOTTOM (L-R):  Hunter, Abbie  

Hunter is daughter Stacy’s oldest; the rest are Emily’s. Anyway, the picture board isnow well populated with current pictures.

So, time to show what I started this week - a new quilt for me. I fell in love with a relatively new line of fabric, Olive’s Flower Market, and fell into a beginner-type trap; I bought a FQ bundle and lots of yardage to make myself a quilt based on this Rose Cottage pattern.  I like the lattice pattern and the small green inner border, and decided to do my own thing regarding size of squares/quilt, borders, etc.

Once I got piecing it and began putting it up on the design board, it was just not working. I  was trying to use all the colors on the interior of the quilt (left) and didn’t like it. So I pulled out the black (see right pic) and it was much better. The camera doesn’t capture these colors correctly. The green is more yellowish in real life (a la Greenery, the Pantone color of the year) and the pinks are really softer and warmer.  Anyway, it’s better, but still rather matchy-matchy.

Four of these smaller blocks form an X, and I have enough fabric to do five across by six down. But I have opted to go with a 4x6 layout instead. Next will be a small green text inner border with this fabric. The pic below is a more accurate green and is what all the above really looks like. 

The final border will be a medium pink floral. And then there are scores of waste HSTs from making the blocks above. I have sewn them into flying geese or prairie points. I may incorporate these in another inner border, but have to get to that point to see if it will work or not. If not, I will use them, plus the leftover blocks, plus the leftover FQs to make a second quilt which I can donate somewhere.  

So, somehow this quilt isn’t going or looking as planned, and I am surprised that other than sewing full-speed-ahead on the blocks for one day, I am not enjoying this quilt either. But I think the reason is because I used one line of fabric. It occurs to me that I might have grown beyond that - using someone else’s color formula in the form of a single line of fabric. Lesson learned.  I have so been looking forward to Tula Pink’s new line Tabby Road coming out. But I am not going to buy a FQ bundle or any other bundle. I will buy the 2-3 prints in yardage that I really want, and supplement from my stash when it comes time to use it. By the way, the line is very Kaffe-like, in my opinion.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Bruce (DH) is having surgery on his arm on Monday morning at o’dark thirty. The malignant lumps will be removed - and anything else that is involved - until they get “clear margins” (meaning that no cancer cells are found in the immediate adjacent tissues when an on-the-spot biopsy is done). Then the doctors will splint and pack his arm as part of a staged surgery. In other words, they will do no skin grafting or anything until the long-term biopsies come back, 7-10 days.  At that point, if the margins are clear, they can do grafts. That is the result we are hoping for. If not clear..... that’s the elephant in the room, but we aren’t worrying about that for now. Keep a good thought for us!

Have a great week. I will hopefully be back on Tuesday with a quilt finish. Do you think they will let me bring my sewing machine into the waiting room?

Quarter I Finish-Along Goals

It’s time to list and link up my 2017 Finish-Along goals for the first quarter of the year. This list is so helpful to me, being the organized sort of person I am. I love being able to set goals and check things off.

Loving a checklist is a holdover habit from my working days. DH says I always tell him what I got done every day (not what I did, but what I got done) like I have to prove I was doing something instead of eating bonbons on the couch while watching TV. Yep, sounds like me. Come to think of it, it may have more to do with justifying my summer days to my mother when I was a kid (she worked). Good grief!

Oh well. Regardless, here is my list:

1.  Rainbow Rails.  This is a quilt top pieced for the 2016 Rainbow Scrap Challenge. It’s made with vintage sheets and is currently basted and ready for quilting and binding.

EDITED TO ADD:  FINISHED and blogged about here.

 

2.  Rainbow Dresdens.  Another RSC 2016 quilt top. Centers are doilies and yo-yos, backgrounds are solid pastels in blue, yellow pink. Needs to be basted, quilted and bound.

EDITED TO ADD:  Finished and blogged about HERE.

3.   Scrappy Improv (RSC 2016) in Cool Tones.  Needs basting, quilting, binding.
EDITED TO ADD:  FINISHED and blogged about here.

4.  Scrappy Improv (RSC 2016) in Warms. Needs basting, quilting, binding.
Edited to add:  Finished and blogged about HERE. 

5.  Quilt for Brother-in-law.  This will be a simple Disappearing 9-patch in black, white, gray and turquoise. An easy make that I need to have done in about a month.

EDITED TO ADD: FINISHED and blogged about HERE.

6.  Rose Cottage Quilt in Olive’s Flower Market. I just love the fabrics and have probably bought enough to do three quilts, but this one is for MOI.

7.  Rainbow 16-Patch Quilt (RSC 2016).
FINISHED!  Photographed and blogged about HERE.

I actually thought I had sewn these together already as a flimsy until I discovered them in on a WIP shelf. My bad. This needs to be done this quarter to make room for other WIPs!

I was going to add an eighth quilt (my Farm Girl Vintage quilt, which is in blocks still), but I know that there is no way on God’s green earth that I will realistically get to it this quarter. But it will be on the second quarter list, because I am going to put my sewing machine foot pedal to the metal and SEW.

Speaking of pedals, my foot pedal cord keeps cutting out. I just had Bernadette (my Bernina 550QE) in for her annual spa treatment, and they said the connection was just fine. I think they misunderstood what was happening, and I should have been more clear that it was the pedal cord, not the connection. But we are getting by for now, and I don`t want to take it back again until I have to.

Linking up to the 1st Quarter Finish-Along linky party. Why not join us?