Saturday, July 25, 2015

Guest Bed Update

We have a guest room that is seldom used for guests, but we want to be sure it is available when we have folks over. The room has had my stationary bike in it, but there just isn't much room, and the linens get dirty from the cat sleeping on it and the space just can't be used for anything else.
So, we decided a Murphy bed was the answer. It was a bit more difficult than we anticipated to put it together, but not really that hard. We bought a Next Bed frame and it only took about a week to arrive. 

Having the bed hang out and just looking at the bottom isn't too fun, so we are going to put bookcases between the bed and the room. You can see there is a small alcove that holds the bed, so we'll put bookcases on a platform with wheels and move it out of the way toward the right in this picture and we'll have more storage, and cover up the bed when it is not in use. 

It will just look like bookcases, and we'll roll them out of the way. I have more room now, and that feels good.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Yay! I Figured it Out

I was finally able to get the Bailey's skipped stitches problem (mostly) figured out. I played with the tension some more and got it working, at least for this quilt. I used a simple free motion pattern in each color block, just back and forth with rounded ends.
Like this. This is the back of the quilt, and I added some of the leftover blocks to the back to make it wider and to add a bit of interest. The back and the front go together OK, nothing spectacular, but the quilt is sandwiched AND QUILTED! YAY.

I was able to finally get it working because I re-read this blog post and loosened the top tension. I also increased the tension in the bobbin and the top tension before I played some more. The weird thing is that even though the top tension was loosened quite a bit, the stitches are still mostly balanced. Who knew.

Just some binding and a label and it's ready to go, and the baby isn't even due until November. I don't know what to think about that :-)

I've linked up to Lee, at Freshly Pieced.

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Quilting Problems and Other Stuff

I am trying to quilt with the new Bailey's and the bobbin thread kept breaking. I finally figured out that I had threaded it incorrectly. After I fixed that I played around with the tension while sewing through cotton fabric. Got that right, but now, when I try to quilt it keeps breaking. The quilt I am working on is backed with Minkee (or a Minkee knock-off) and that may be the problem. I've been researching online and it seems that for some reason quilting machines are much more touchy about fabric/thread/needle combinations. My Bernina will happily work with just about any combination so I guess I'm spoiled. I'll work more on it tomorrow, and if I can't quilt this one on the Bailey's I'll just finish it on the Bernina. I just called Bailey's and have changed to a quilt sandwich instead of just fabric. It works fine, so the problem is the Minkee....drat.

I've been gone since the 25th. I went camping with some of my family in California. It was wonderful to see everyone, but a little ironic that I drove 17 hours so I could spend time in the mountains: driving from the Rockies, across the desert to the Sierras. Spending time with family was worth it though. Two of my brothers and my sisters were there with their spouses. My two brother's kids were all there with their kids, and my sister's son came for a few days. We had some in-laws there as well, so altogether about 35 people. The weather was nice, mostly in the 80s. It was interesting to leave Colorado early morning at 51 degrees and that afternoon arrive in Las Vegas at 114 degrees. Yikes! People go to Las Vegas on purpose at this time of year, and then they go outside in that heat. Not for me!

Before I left I sewed a shirt for my nephew, an apron for my niece and some bags to share.
 I'm planning two baby quilts. The one with the Minkee on the back is for my niece whose baby is due in September and another for my niece-in-law whose son (after three daughters--daddy is thrilled) is due in November.   I got the top done and it is based on ,A Walk in the Park (it's free but you might have to register to get it.) It's going to have a border with white and one of the colors from the quilt, probably the blue.
I've linked to Judy's blog. http://patchworktimes.com


LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...