I love to sew, mainly quilts and bags. I am 66, married to Fred and have one son, Matthew, who is 27. I enjoy embroidery and applique and prefer to machine piece and quilt my projects. I love my vintage Singer sewing machines especially my Featherweight 222K. I’m enjoying treadling on my 201K Singer and I collect Miniature Sewing Machines and currently have three Essex , one Singer 20, one Singer 40, two Vulcan Miniatures and my latest, a Grain. My love of sewing I believe comes from my Grandmother - I still have the drawings she made for me to embroider on tea towels many many years ago!

Friday, 22 May 2015

BEAUTIFUL SIGGY BLOCKS

A beautiful siggy from Konstanze in Germany 

and here is the beautiful siggy from Leonore also in Germany
I think this one will become a Pin Cushion as Leonore
has put my initial on it.

I still enjoy being in the International Siggy Swap and recently received these two lovely blocks.  Thank you Konstanze and Leonore, I love your siggies!  I think I will make some sewing machine covers with some of the siggy blocks I have received.  I have already made a wall hanging so now that I have so many sewing machines, I will make them some pretty dust covers.  I think that will be a lovely way to view the siggy blocks and will certainly be a talking point for visitors to my home.

Sewing time has been a bit hit and miss lately with our Summer hanging in so much longer than it usually does and the days just have not been conducive to sewing at all although a lovely cold change has arrived today!  I am continuing to work on the machine appliqué project - By Air, By Rail, By Sea.  I am using my Brother Innov-is 200 Quilters Edition for this project.  It does a very nice blanket stitch.

My newest addition to my Vintage Sewing Machine collection is the Singer 99K Hand Crank and I am making my Siggy Blocks on this machine so it gets some regular use.  I am really enjoying sewing on this machine - love being able to sew very slowly with the Hand Crank!  I think this machine will be great for fiddly top stitching and bag making.



Just yesterday I started a new project (click to go to Quilt-Along site)  on my Singer 201K Knee-Shift.  I gave it an Oil and clean and started making some Half Square Triangles on it yesterday afternoon.  I will be making a Table Topper - the Quilt-Along is called Scrap Dance Mystery Quilt Along and it's by "From My Carolina Home" - I have linked to the website above.  I found lots of suitable scraps in my scrap bag - all sewing related!  so this will be a Table Topper for one of my sewing tables.   I love sewing on this machine, it is so quiet and I can really control my speed with the knee-shift lever.  Note the new LED lightbulb!  Love it !  it is from April 1930s Sewing Shoppe.  If you have a Vintage Machine with the old incandescent light bulbs (ouch.... very hot!) you will love the new LED bulbs as they are so much brighter and stay cool.  April has them in both Warm and Bright White.  By giving this machine a project it keeps it oiled and cleaned and ensures some regular sewing time.  These old machines need to be used.

My Singer 201K Knee-Shift machine - a great little workhorse!
You will see I still have the manual pages beside me when I work
on my machines!

Here you can see how I am using the wide side of the normal Singer
sewing foot to sew my 1/4" seams down each side of the
drawn line.  Yes it's back to front sewing but it works like a charm!
I am chain stitching the HST's

My Hand Sewing project is coming along nicely.  I'm now up to the third border of boats.  As many of you know, I MUST have a hand sewing project at ALL times :-)   ...  need something to do when we go out for our daily coffee!


Today is a lovely cold and windy day - just finished some housework (boring but necessary) and about to head in to the sewing room to work on those Half Square Triangles.

Happy Sewing!
Cheers from Helen


3 comments :

  1. What delightful siggy blocks! They are both great. The violet one is pretty and the "H" is perfect for you!

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  2. Even though it's been too hot for you to sew much, you have managed to keep yourself pretty busy. We'll done for keeping the older sewing machines in the spotlight and reminding us just how much sewing we can do on them.

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