Don’t you just love how a flat, one-dimensional block of patchwork suddenly comes to life when you start quilting it? Something that was flat and lifeless is magically transformed, with a soft texture that just begs you to touch it.

Can you tell I’m jazzed? I’ve been working away diligently on Sarah’s quilt. There are nine blocks, and I have six done. It’s slow work, what with horsing around with the walking foot, but it sure does look nice when the block is done. At least I only have three blocks left to do, so that’s not so bad. Then I just have to quilt the outside borders, which should go really quickly.

I did two blocks this morning, and was going to do another this afternoon, but wound up running to the store with my dear hubby. His wireless mouse quit working, and we had to go exchange it so he could play games on his computer tonight.

Yesterday was stormy and blustery, with about three inches of snow and lots of wind. But today it was sunny, and much warmer than I thought it would be. It was a gorgeous winter afternoon, so I took advantage of it. I scooped the snow out of the driveway and walked up to the store to pick up a few groceries.

Andrew went fishing this morning at the Chocolay River. If he goes tomorrow, I may go with him. He said it looked like a great place to go snowshoeing. I can go exploring while he tries to hook into a brown trout, or a steelhead. He nearly caught one this morning, but it got away.  So we had pizza for supper instead, which was OK, too.

Here’s a shot of my favorite kitty.  She really likes this spot.  It’s warm and cozy, right in front of the heating vent!  Where else would a cat hang out in the winter?  On sunny winter days, the sun shines through the kitchen window, right onto this spot for an hour or so!  No wonder she likes it so well.

Free motion quilting seemed like a great idea this morning.  I was all set to do some really cool stuff with Sarah’s quilt.  But when I sat down to practice, Things Did Not Go Well.  I couldn’t get any control over my stitch length at all, or over where the quilting lines were going.

The problem, as you can see from my picture,  is my set-up.  I really do need a sewing table that I can set my sewing machine down into so that it’s flush with the surface.  I considered trying to put things around my sewing machine to make a flat surface to quilt on, but I’ve jury-rigged things in the past, with less than satisfactory results!

I need to save my pennies so that I can get a sewing table.  Until I can do that, I decided it’s best to save myself the frustration of making a mess (and then having to waste hours picking out a million stitches of varying lengths).  So I wimped out, and put the walking foot back on.

You’d be amazed what you can do with a walking foot.  The obvious first step was to make parallel lines of stitching on the blue sashing.  This was pretty easy, and went reasonably fast.

I still wasn’t sure what to do with the individual blocks, though.  I was going to do the borders, then come back to the blocks later, but after lunch I thought I’d try my hand at quilting the center block.

I worked around the log cabin strips in a spiral, using the walking foot.  When I came to the cats in the center, I decided to outline quilt them.

The center block was the most complicated, so I wanted to do it first to get it out of the way.  I outlined the kitties, the kitten in the carriage, the wheels, and some of the streamers.

It was pretty painstaking work, but it just proves that anything is possible, especially if you’re willing to horse around with a walking foot!  But it took less than an hour, all told, so it was still a lot faster than hand quilting it.  Plus it will go through the washer and dryer with no problems, which is important for a baby quilt!

The other blocks are smaller, and have less detail, so they should go a whole lot faster than the center block.

I’m pretty jazzed. I may even have the quilting done by the end of the week!

I have to say that I’ve never really messed around with sewing machine feet much.  But I guess I never knew what I was missing…

I bought a walking foot for my New Home sewing machine a year or so ago.  Actually, I forgot I had it, but found it several weeks ago.  I wasn’t sure what it was, or even if it went with my machine, so I tried putting it on, but for some reason the needle wouldn’t go all the way down.  I was a bit annoyed, because by then I had remembered buying it (and how much I had paid for it), so it was aggravating that it wouldn’t work.

When I was in Minnesota, I was helping my daughter with her everlasting pile of mending (she says she saves it for when I come to visit ).  I was trying to fix a slipcover for her, but was having trouble with the slippery material, so we put on her walking foot, and it worked like a charm.

When I got home, I was inspired to try again.  And this time I figured out how to get it to work.

New Home sewing machines were made by Janome.  I don’t know if they’re still made or not.  I got my machine from AllBrands.com probably three years ago.  I was a little leery of buying a sewing machine online, but I’ve been very happy with it.  Once I found out they were made by Janome, I figured that Janome presser feet would work on them, since I can’t find anything made for New Home.

That’s almost right.  It does take a little bit of goofing around to get the Janome feet to work, but it can be done.

Here’s a picture of my walking foot.  Sorry it’s a little blurry, but my camera wouldn’t focus any better than that up close.  Look at the white handle that is just above the thumbscrew you loosen to change the needle.  The thumbscrew is black, and is just to the right and above the needle.

When I first tried the presser foot, I had the white lever underneath this thumbscrew.  When the lever is under it, the needle can’t go down all the way because it’s blocking the needle attachment.  When I put it on so the lever is above the thumbscrew, the needle can go down all the way.  I’m not sure what the lever is for, as the walking foot works just fine, even if the lever is up.

So that mystery is solved.  I didn’t know how great a walking foot is.  I used it to quilt a small project this morning, and didn’t have to contend with the material getting pushed out of kilter by the pressure foot.  Sweet!

My next sewing machine foot adventure involves a gathering foot.  I had never used one before, but I wanted to make those swirly hippie skirts that have tiers of ruffles on them.  The problem is that I absolutely detest making gathers by running lines of basting around the top of the ruffle and then pulling the thread to make gathers.  It takes forever, and the gathers always want to shift unless you use 900 pins, which makes sewing a painful experience as I manage to find everyone of them.  So a gathering foot sounded intriguing.

I used to have a ruffler attachment that came with a sewing machine I had years ago, but it looked too complicated to use, so I never tried it.  I googled rufflers and gathering feet, and the gathering foot sounded pretty easy to use.  It was also a lot less expensive, which was another factor in its favor.  I looked for one at my local stores, but nobody had one, so I turned to ebay and found Ken’s Sewing and Vacuum Center.  I bought a gathering foot from him before I left for Minneapolis.

When I got back home, it still hadn’t come, so I emailed Ken, who told me the Post Office had sent it back!  Why?  Who knows, it’s the Post Office.  They don’t have to make sense.  Anyway, Ken mailed it out again, and this time it made it to my house without any further PO-inspired detours.

I finally sat down to play with it yesterday morning.  Aughhh!  My sewing machine feet are supposed to snap on, but try as I might, it wouldn’t snap on!  Frustration reigned.

But I was persistent.  I looked at the foot, and it has a second bar across the back, which for some reason wouldn’t allow it to snap on.  I got the idea to take off the pressure foot attachment like you would if you were putting on a walking foot.  When I took it off, the gathering foot went right on.  I put the pressure foot dealie back on my machine, and guess what, it sewed!

But now how to get it to gather?  Reading the directions on the card helped.  I was putting the material to be gathered right on top of the piece I wanted to sew it to, and it was gathering both.  I finally read the directions and realized that you only work with the piece you want gathered.  Then you sew the gathered piece on in a second step.  Once I had that down, it was a piece of cake.

The higher the tension, and the longer the stitch, the more it gathers.  I had my stitich length maxed out, and turned the tension up to 7, and it made wonderful gathers.  The piece of material was 26″ long before gathering, and about 16″ after, so hopefully I’ll be able to figure out how long to cut my pieces for ruffles.

All I can say is that this is one slick tool.  I’ll be making swirly skirts like crazy now!  It was definitely worth the hassle of trying to figure out how to get it on my sewing machine.  Oh yeah, I have to remove the presser foot assembly to take it off, too.  Oh well.