7 Days of New Year's - Day 3 & 4: A Long Overdue Accessory Finished and a WIP Set Up for Quilting

On the way to New Year's, the days of cleaning up continue!  On Day 3 yesterday,  I got started on two more projects:  an accessory I've long wanted to make and a project I had expected to complete back in the Fall.

The accessory:  A little dresden spool pin pad!

This is my second mini dresden project in a little more than a week!  I've been dying to make one of these ever since I saw it on the Singer Featherweight Shop site many, many, many years ago.  So what took so long to make it?  Well first of all, when I first put my machine in service back in 2016, I had purchased one of these:

Since I already had a cute spool pin pad,  I admit I was in no rush to make it.  Then it was deciding what fabrics to use for it.   When I made another "Catchall Cutie" and a pop-up trash bin for my Featherweight travel set,  I finally settled on going with a red and white color scheme.  I then combed through my scraps for the blade and center fabrics and made up the plastic templates to make this up.  However my little kit has still sat, moving from spot to spot in my quilt space waiting for a good time to make it.  

So when I started compiling my  "7 Days" list,  I decided that this was one of the things that finally needed to get done!  The other reason I was excited to make this is that it calls for something special:  in the pattern, they use a Singer Buttonholer attachment to make the eyelet buttonhole for the center.  This would be the maiden voyage for mine!

At the time that the Singer Featherweight shop debuted the pattern they had also started selling vintage refurbished buttonholers.  They also sold the vintage eyelet cams which are hard to find and so very expensive (whew, I see they are even more expensive now than they were then!).  They also had new custom molded eyelet cams manufactured which are more reasonably priced.

However,  I found that buttonholers often came up for sale on eBay and eventually snagged a nice one for $20.  However, while the one I got came with a lot of cams,  it didn't come with the eyelet one.  Eventually I found out on a vintage machine chat group that a company called Greist also made buttonholers around the same time that Singer made them and the cams they made were identical to the Singer ones.  Not being as well known a company, there are also alot of those on the eBay market and of course are a lot cheaper which is how I eventually got one for my machine.  

Now you may wonder how a straight stitch machine like the Featherweight makes the zigzag stitches needed for a buttonhole:  in this case, the machine needle doesn't move side to side, the buttonholer moves the fabric!

That video is the test I ran on the unit yesterday.  The manual for it says you should oil and lubricate it "for each day of use" so I had to take the unit apart to do that.  Hmmm, if people really did all that back in the day, no wonder these things last forever!

If you are interested in the pattern or a kit to make the Dresden spool pin pad, you can purchase them from the Singer Featherweight Shop here.  For details about the buttonholer and how to also use it for monogramming (!), check out their blog post about the attachment (that also has a detailed video of it in use) here.  

 The WIP:  "Gathering A Garden" wallhanging

Over the Summer and Fall,  I had finally got this long over due project moved off of the UFO list and onto the WIP - Flimsies list.

The top and pieced backing.

I had even given some thought to how I wanted to quilt it and came up with a simple plan for that.  However, a busy Fall meant that I never moved forward on that until now.  Another reason why it has taken a bit to get to that is that I had planned to make up a "Frankenbatt" for it to use up a bunch of batting scraps.  I finally got that done yesterday.

Okay, not the smoothest assembly of batting but hopefully it will quilt okay.  So today's task was to get it all layered -- Done!

I could barely see all the pins in the picture.....

Not much better but they are there!

Since this is a small quilt, the actual layering didn't take long -- even with having to re-do the intial layout because the back had not been pulled out tight enough.  I had to go back in and tape it down to get the basting done.  What really took long was clearing off my cutting table which had alot more "bits and bobs" than I thought buried on it!  All of a sudden I had to remember what I had planned to do with things sitting there or remember why I had printed out certain designs or finally decide if I was going to work on that scrap project I had pulled some fabrics for now (and if so find a place to keep it "in sight") or if it would have to wait until later (and if so, where is it going to go now?!?).  

I wish I could say that the table will stay clear but I doubt it.  I doubt it because I pushed a bunch of stuff onto my sewing table to facilitate the basting so now will have to move things again in order to quilt this.   I had mapped out a simple plan for quilting it so I am hoping I can get that done over the next day or two and eliminate this project (and the remaining bag of its stash) from my space and open up another clear spot.  

So that's the plan for tomorrow although I also hope to work on a label for a quilt as well.  However, I have an appointment and some shopping to do so I'll see what I am able to get to.