Making More Napkins

I swear cloth napkins disappear the same way socks do!  I can't believe I'm on my 4th cycle of making cloth napkins already.  Each time I make about a dozen or so and add it to the napkin basket.  But after a few months that basket gets a little more empty and I find myself sewing up more napkins again.

I'm sticking with the same 1 fabric, no fills napkins but this time I wanted to experiment with my hemming foot....notice a pattern? :P The results?  Disaster!!  Okay Okay it was that dramatic, but the results sure wasn't pretty:


 Aren't those the messiest corners you've even seen?

 
I do like the convenience of hemming foot.  Look how nicely it curls in the edges for a nice even folded edge...  Too bad I can't get the corners to behave!


After wasting like half an hour playing around with this foot and wasting 3 napkin fabrics I went back to my handy-reliable way of making them:

 
Fold, Fold, stitch.  Much clean look and - for me - a much easier and fun experience.


Neat corners :).  Takes a little more effort but it works for me.

Another 14 9 napkins to add to the basket.  I am crossing my fingers not to make any more napkins for at least another 6 months :P.

Modded Brown Chugs Along

Wow, it's been almost a month since I had a chance to work on this quilt:

This was as far as I went last time - putting the quilt top with the batting. I rolled it up and it's been sitting in my living room for almost a month.  Today I get to roll it out and make some progress...finally!

But a couple of hours of quality time and now this quilt is ready for the quilting machine - well my sewing machine with a quilting leg attachment (Juki TL-98Q).  Close enough right?  Gets the job done :).

I did the first part of the quilt sandwich last month so this time it was just the matter of finishing it up with the quilt backing.

This is all 3 layers place together and smoothed out - quilt top, batting, quilt back - all ready for basting.

Takes up most of my living room rug.  I like to (whenever possible) assemble the quilt on the rug because it's just more comfortable to work on than the hardware floor. The rug isn't on of those ultra plush rugs so there's no much give to wrinkle up the fabrics.

A closeup of the quilt sandwich:

This stage is always so scary to me - it's when all the pieces come together and you get to see if all your measuring, cutting and sewing was done correctly.  Luckily, this one was :) - all the pieces lining up just fine.

After every each of the quilt sandwich was smoothed out it is time for the safety pins to come out again.  I use a lot of pins.  I start from one end of the quilt and make my one to the other end.  For the edges I pin about 2-3 inches apart, for the interior I pin about 4-6 inches apart.

Pins, Pins, Pins:

I love the look of a neatly pinned quilt.  Here is a closeup of the pins - notice the ones on the edges are closer together than the ones in the interior.  

The quilt is now ready for some quilting.  I'm going to be doing a freestyle motion quilting.  Hopefully I could schedule this into my next week's goals.

My Juki

I don't have a fancy long-arm machine (YET) but I know that my little Brother wouldn't handle the amount of quilting I'm planning to do. The solution, well at least my solution, was the Juki TL-98Q.  I've been piecing and quilting with it for a few weeks now.  The verdict? I like it A LOT.  Why I don't LOVE it?  Even though the neck is larger than a lot of home sewing machines, it is still quite small compared to a long-arm.  I tried the HandiQuilter at a local sewing machine shopped and it was fabulous.  But because of space and money constraints, I will have to live with my Juki for a little while.

Juki sitting on my sewing table. It comes with a good size extended table top for more surface area - very good for quilting. 

Features of the Juki TL-98Q   

Tap foot thread cutter:
In addition to the thread cutter button in the front of the machine Juki has also included a tap foot threat cutting button on the control foot. That way you could just tap (with the same foot as the control foot) to cut your thread. It took me a little while to get used to this option. I totally got into it when I put together pieces for my new quilt. Love the tap foot feature! I don't need to take my hands my quilting surface at all.

Knee Head Left
A must-have feature I now must have in any sewing machine. This is also great because I don't need to ever take my hands off the quilting surface. Just a slight push of my knee against the lifter and the sewing head goes up. I know I know, this is not a new feature and I have used it before on my mom's sewing machine, but I completely forgot about it since my old Brother did not have this feature. I don't think I could live without it anymore.

Bobbin Winder
It's fast, very easy to use. BUT it doesn't work in conjunction with sewing. One thing I liked about my Brother (one of not that many) is the option to wind the bobbin while I am sewing. I could choose to just wind the bobbin, just sew, or sew AND wind bobbin simultaneously. Though I did not often used both at the same time, it's nice to have on a time crunch when I don't want to be sitting there winding my bobbins - I could wind and sew at the same time. Like I said, the Juki-98Q does not have this feature. While the bobbin is winding the sewing mechanics do not function. Something minor, but I wish they have it on the Juki.

Bobbin Size
The bobbin used for this machine is also very small.  For sewing it's fine.  For quilting, it becomes quite a hassle.  For a crib/lap size quilt I usually need to have 4 full bobbins to complete the quilting.

Needle Up/Down 
A nice feature to have. This is something I could live without but it's nice none the less. With a push of a button I could make the needle go in the UP or DOWN position. Guess I'm pretty much used to the manual up/down wheel on most machines. Very useful at the start of a sewing line, with the needle up I slide in my fabric, then quick push of button I could have the needle go down so I could let go of my fabric without it sliding around. The button is also very close to the head of the sewing needle so I don't have to reach quite as far to get to the manual up/down wheel on the far right of the machine.

Overall this is a great machine. It is very fast, quiet, and portable enough to move around when I need to use another machine. In my small sewing room it's a nice machine to have. I have already pieced together 3 quilt tops, 4 bindings, and quilting 2 quilts (pictures below). One quilt was a straight line that I used the walking foot with. I don't think I would be doing that again. There was a lot of bunching and awkward to against. I broke 2 needles trying to fix the bunching. The second quilt I used the 1/4" quilting foot. It worked beautifully. All I had to do was against a few settings and drop the dog feed and I was free-motion quilting in no time.