White / Green Featherweight

Well, I have acquired another Singer Featherweight sewing machine.  Supposedly these are rarer than the black Singer Featherweights.

While traveling the Oregon Coast from the California border to the Washington border, and shop hopping for the Quilt Run 101, my husband found this for sale at one of the quilt shops while I was looking at fabric.  He is such a dear, he knew I wanted a white/green one, but I had told him they were really rare, and I doubted we would even come across one to buy, much less at a cost we could our would spend.  

This quilt shop had a second partner that does upholstery and home decorating, but was wanting to retire and was selling off some of her goodies.  And one of them was this machine.  I dickered with her a little bit and we picked it up for what most black ones go for in price and walked out the door with it.

It came with the original green/white case, several feet three bobbins and the instruction book.  I plugged it in, threaded it, and did a sample stitch line and it sews perfectly!

The serial numbers on these are more difficult to find out the date that they were release for sale, but from what I can gather, this one came out in 1968.

It is also my understanding the white/green ones are better made, and have more durable parts.  One expert has this to say about them:

 Singer Featherweight machines were produced in black, beige/tan and  white/green (what the company called Pale Turquoise)

White/Green machines were produced only at Clydebank, Great Britain 

he fabric/rubber belt on White/Green machines does not break. In fact it  makes for a quieter and slightly-lighter machine

Repairmen did not like the White/ Green machine and spread rumours about  its unreliability. Not true. The reason it was not favoured in the trade was  that because of the belt the whole machine could not be dumped in cleaning  fluid as a quick and easy service option

It is not possible to accurately state the manufacturing date of any Singer

 Featherweight. Singer claims to be able to do this, but the information the  company gives out refers to the dates on which large batches of serial  numbers were released to the various factories. It's pretty safe to assume that  a particular machine was not made before its "birthdate" but it could have  been produced considerably later

So this makes my 10th sewing machine taking up residence in the house/sewing room.  Hmmmm...not sure if there will be any more?

Note:  I have updated my tab "Sewing Machines" with new pictures and written updates.

Warmest...

"Little Trip to Bali"

I have had this as a UFO for about 4 years.  I was working at a local quilt shop, and saw this in the book, "Keepsake Baby Quilts from Scraps"by Julie Higgins from Clotilde.com.  (See I was liking scrappy quilts for some time now!)

It was my first time using batiks, so I ended up buying lots of fat quarters, and a charm pack.  

I had all of the elephant blocks appliquéd, and the center blocks all cut out.  I went ahead and assembled the center blocks and then went on to make the top.  I also used a batik for the background, which can be hard to find the lighter colors.  

I now have it sandwiched and pinned and working on the quilting.  So far I have done cross hatching in the center, as the blocks are on point.

I chose to do shadow quilting around the elephants.  There are twelve of them, and this part is taking longer than I expected.

Then there were the blank corner blocks and the blank blocks in between the elephant blocks that I needed to do some kind of quilting, as that was lots of big spaces.  

So I took the original stencils of the elephant, and outlined it on each block and just did a stitching around the outline.  

It's a little hard to see when taking pictures, but it finished out these blank spaces just perfect.

I have about three elephants to do the shadow quilting, and then I will be able to get it bound and another one will be completed.

I'll be back with finished pictures in a few days.  

Warmest...

The 40's Basket Quilt

I mentioned that I had gotten back three quilts from the long arm quilter, and I needed to add binding to them.  This is the first on that I did, the 40's print of basket patterns.

I needed to chose a binding color, and came up with 30's reproduction blue and yellow.

As you can see here (work in progress of putting on the binding), I chose the yellow.  This whole quilt was bright and cheery, I went with the the color that was just that, the one that looks like the sun.

These are the only pictures I picked to use for now (the weather here in the Pacific Northwest is not working withe blog picture taking) of this quilt. 

This is a close up of one of the basket blocks showing the quilting and one of the basket patterns used in the quilt.  If you look at the top picture of the whole quilt, you'll notice that each basket block is a different pattern.

I am really happy to see that this one is done, finished, complete!  It will fit a twin size bed and will look just right someday, when I figure out how to do some displaying of them throughout the house.  

Warmest...