Friday Fun

This morning I had breakfast with my friend, Sue.  We were supposed to walk, but my knee is acting up again.  I can't get into the doctor until the 12th.  The last time this happened, my doctor did some muscle work on my knee, then a few days later, it made a loud pop and felt as if it shifted sideways.  Then, it was all better!  I'm thinking I might have an adhesion or something from a previous surgery.  In any case, I'm limping, and so I can't walk as long as it's bothering me like that.  So....we met and had breakfast.  We waited forEVER for our food to arrive even though people who came in later were getting served.  Finally, it came, and it was good.  We were in no hurry.  We hadn't seen one another in several weeks, and so we had lots of catching up to do.

Since I was in town, I decided to pay a visit to one of the local quilt shops.  I like this particular shop because they have the most gorgeous batiks I've seen in any shop anywhere.  And since I didn't need any more fabric, I avoided doing anything more than look.  But my real reason for going into this particular shop is that they have a great remnant bin, which did not disappoint me.  The fabrics were all in approximate one-yard increments and they were 25% off.  So, of course, I practically cleaned them out.  Here's what I got:

Oh.  Well, that didn't work very well.  Let's try that again:

After messing up my picture, Mr. Smitty got very interested in my Winter Wonderland quilt.  I think he might have been seeing the sparkle of the hot fix crystals.  He stared at it for the longest time.  Busy body.

You might remember that I tried to make the next of the Vintage Sewing Machine blocks last week only to discover that my embroidery "transfer" wouldn't transfer to the fabric.  I emailed the quilt shop, and they sent me another one.  Happily, this one worked.  This is the Casige No. 3 machine. 

With all that detail, you can see why I didn't want to have to trace it the old fashioned way.  Here's what the actual machine looks like:

This machine is actually an earlier version of the Casige 2 (go figure) and is the earliest machine having outrigger gears.  This model was introduced in 1904 and was later replaced by the 3/2 with internal gearing for the handwheel.  Some collectors refer to the base as "spider feet".  This model was offered with various decorations and different bases until 1935.

I'm not ready to start on this stitchery yet, but I was curious to see if the transfer would work.  Now, all is right with the world.  I still have a few days of work left on my current cat stitchery, and then I'll start on this one.

Once that was finished, I did all of the top-stitching on my current door for the Doors of Ireland quilt.  One more time, this is the original door:

And here's my completed door:

I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out.  I'll do a little more stitching on it when it is sewn into a quilt and quilted.  I want to do some stippling in the grass and shrub, and I'll probably outline the bricks and structures on the house a little more.  For now I'm putting it aside until I have all 12 blocks finished.  These will finish up at 8 1/2 inches each.  Here are the other two doors I have completed:

I think next time around, I'll do this one:

I'm trying to choose a variety of colors and styles of doors.  When I look back over the many doors I photographed, it's sometimes hard to choose.  

So that's it for me today.  This weekend we'll be cleaning up the last of the mess from the plumbing disaster.  We never put things up in the attic, and they're still sitting in the family room.  Since Matthew will be home for Thanksgiving next week, we need to clean things up...not that Matthew would even notice, but still...

Any great plans for the weekend?