Ladies and Gentleman.... Nina, the newest member to this sewing family.

Many of you don't know what I've been sewing on the past two years.  I learned on my Mom's 1970's something when I was little, but three years back I inherited my Grandma's sewing machine. An early 20th century White built-into-a-piece-of-furniture-collectible.  It's a great machine, got it up and running by a local sewing machine witch doctor out here, but I didn't like using it too much (the feed dogs and I didn't get along -- I now know that it was probably the low quality thread I was using that was the issue).  So I conned my dad into buying me an even older Singer.

Me happily fixing a cornhole beanbag for a friend... see my lovely Pinta? She's sitting on top of Santa Maria.  You'll get the names in a second.

All Pinta does is a straight stitch, which worked wonderfully for many years on many newbie projects.  But my mother-in-law (which is awesome) noticed that I needed a little more.  She's the one to blame for my interest in sewing and crafting and she has this vast amount of knowledge and experience.  It's pretty epic to have only a phone call away when I can't figure something out or when I need to dork out on a sewing thing. 

As a Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Good Job finishing your Master's gift, my hubby and her went in together and got me a Bernina 1230 machine.  IT HAS SO MANY BUILT IN STITCHES.

I'll call her Nina. So I've got three sewing machines... the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria... BOLDLY SEWING INTO A NEW WORLD. *a-hem*

You have no idea how thrilled I am to have this machine. LET THE SEWING HARDER AND CRAZIER STITCHES BEGIN!

Punny Pot Holders

I'm trying to improve my general machine quilting skills.  To do so, I decided that making a bunch of pot holders would be an easy way of doing so.

Well, I found this gem of a tutorial and wanted to do something similar.  I made two, one for me and one for my mother-in-law.  I didn't like the "You are so hot!" on the pot holder - it wasn't funny enough for me.  So I googled heat related puns until I found two that I really liked.

Behold!

This one says, "If that pure rump roast? Nothing butt..."

You can see the back splash fabric a little better in this picture.

Mine is already stained from using it (whoops). For the blue fabric I used rotten rack fabric (the stuff people return and it's much cheaper). I loved it. So... tacky. I didn't put a loop on mine but that's because I didn't care. The hubby likes theses because they're big enough for his hands (I didn't follow the tutorial on the sizing... otherwise it would be too small).

For Valentine's Day I made my Grandmother a pair of Heart Shaped pot holders.  I used a tutorial that I can't find now (ARRRRGH) but made some minor modifications.  Even then, I think the Martha Stuart Heart  Shaped Pot Holder pattern is easier than what I did...

You can slip your hand in and just grab away (I definitely played with them for a while like duck mouths... because I'm 5.)

BEWARE - they come out small.  My hands aren't that large, but hubby's hands don't fit at all and mine barely do.  Lucky, my Grandmother is tiny and they should fit her just fine.  If not, they can double as heat pads (which I left a note letting her know that).  I didn't do the other weird material in between, but instead found some lace that I liked as a way of spicing it up.  However, it was hard to properly sew it together, so it didn't come out as well as I'd like. =\ Also, the way the tutorial has you sew them together then just flip them inside out made them bunch up at the tip of the heart and look weird.  It could be how poorly I cut the heart halves, but I doubt cutting it better would solve this issue.

Those are the only ones I managed to do before getting distracted... woot!