Spring....with a chance of sewing

The weather has been spectacular.  Everything has been bursting into bloom.

Some bloom is finished already.  The Bradford Pear trees around the pond have turned green since last week.  We've had a heavy rain and strong winds this week.  Yesterday morning was very chilly, but not as breezy and I caught some nice reflections in the still water.

One of the girls found this photo.  It was taken around 1987.  That's ED with her very long hair on the left, then a friend, MD with all those curls, and the Sailor Son who would have been three or just four.  Hard to believe he was ever that small!  :-)

The Viking was very excited to have a new-to-him pair of boots for running around in our backyard.  Though we are constantly cleaning up, with four dogs it's just easier for us all to wear some kind of "backyard shoes" to keep any messes out of the house.  The paper airplane was given to him by one of the garage owners while we were waiting during my car's oil change.  The Viking was delighted and it was the Toy of the Day.

After everyone had been sick for so long it was nice to get back into the routine of having lunch with Nanny and Papa once a week.  Tuesday is "pizza day" and The Viking does like his pepperoni.  He also likes ketchup on everything.  In this case he was happily dipping his chunks of melon in it.  Ewwwwww!

This is my serger.  The poor thing hasn't seen the light of day for years.  I've carefully carried it from place to place safely stored in it's case and was relieved to find out it is none the worse for it.  A bit of cleaning and oiling and it works perfectly!  First thing I did was make a machine mat with a bag for catching the scraps.

I wanted to try out this pattern and ran to JoAnn's for some inexpensive knit to make a "muslin."  I need to adjust the pattern size as this is too wide across my shoulders.  I also need more serger practice, but it's wearable and I look forward to trying other versions with sleeves.  Very pleased!

While playing around with making the mat and bag for the serger I was trying to quilt the mat with the #4 stitch on the Bernina 720.  Oh. How. Awful.  When you stretched out the stitch to make a nice serpentine pattern it was just terrible.  See the bottom row of stitches.  All wonky and uneven.  I couldn't understand it, as any other Bernina I've used hasn't had this issue.  I checked in with a local dealer and discovered an update for this problem had just been issued!  I zipped up there to pick up the update and sure enough it did the trick.  It even added stitch #1396 to the quilting stitches menu.  So now I can use either #4 or #1396.  Very cool!

So just to prove it works, I dragged out this table runner that's been waiting in the to be quilted pile and did a quick job with some straight line and serpetine quilting and it was quickly done.

Other members of my quilting bee went to Quiltcon East in Savannah last weekend.  They generously brought back a few small goodies for me, not the least of which was this deck of Bonnie Hunter playing cards.  So funny!  Joker Bonnie says, "I said to myself: I need to do something besides sewing today . . . then I laughed and laughed."  I'm laughing right along with you Bonnie!

In 2019 Quiltcon East will be in Nashville and we are already making our plans to go!  In the meantime I have lots of sewing to keep me busy.  I started a short (six month) BOM from Lone Star Mercantile called "Here a Chick, There a Chick" by Bonnie Sullivan.  Raw edge applique on flannel.  Pretty cute.

I also have a biscornu to finish for a guild swap on March 16th.  It is stitching up quickly except for the metallic floss suggested for the dragonflies.  What horrible stuff to work with!  Now I know.   :-)