Not a Quilt

Monday week ago I spent nearly all day in my studio, something I hadn't really ever done before. Have to say, that was pretty fun. :-)

With adding in gardening responsibilities, I rearranged my weekly schedule.  I also wanted to move my stamping to another day because the previous schedule made it hard to get to.  So yesterday I spent the morning working on quilts.  After lunch I worked on some general sewing and then worked on Christmas cards.

General sewing is also a task I have had a hard time getting to as well, not being inclined to use my quilting time for such.  Quilt…sew, quilt….mend, hmmm, let me think.  Yep, quilting won every time.  

As I have mentioned in my posts on organizing, time is like space.  Picture the week as a closet with seven shelves.  How much stuff is put on those shelves and how it is arranged can make for a peaceful, effective schedule or it can make for chaos.  So, for me at least, I have found that if I don't have a space on the shelf for an activity, it just never gets done.  If I try to cram too much onto a shelf, I get stressed.  I want to be steadily busy, but not start the day running and hope I keep up. Some days end up being like that, even with planning, but planning helps make them happen occasionally rather than constantly.  

So, now I have time in the schedule for general sewing, and my first projects were some clothes adjustments.  Being a person on the short side, hemming is just something I plan to do when I buy clothes, so that was first up on my to-dos.  Next up was finding a way to adjust some pants that were basically new, but were now a size too big.  Mulled over ideas and talked it over with my younger daughter, a graduate in fashion design.  Decided on trying to insert some elastic in the waistband and had good success with that.  Finally, needing a belt for some other pants that tended to be a little on the loose-side, I took sturdy ribbon I had in my miscellaneous stash and made a belt.  

I would still rather quilt though…..   

An Unexpected Find

A few weeks ago we were trying to make some room in one of the cabinets at my quilt group.  I pulled out what looked like a green suitcase and asked what it was.  "An old sewing machine," was the reply.  I opened it up and there was a Bernina 730 Record.  My eyes got big, and since no one uses it, suggested that we could sell it and have the church put the money in our group's budget.  

I brought it home to see what condition it was in.  It was missing all the accessories except the basic straight stitch/zigzag foot that was on it.  The machine was in good shape and ran well, but the foot control would hesitate and then go too fast, making it hard to control the sewing speed.  I seriously considered buying it myself, but after doing some research online, saw that it would be difficult and expensive to replace the foot control.  

Still, Grandma Bernie, as I dubbed her, is a really neat machine and I will be sorry to let her go.  They just don't make machines like that anymore, sadly.