How Much Do You Love YOUR Iron?

I made a blue and orange quilt for a customer, which she picked up this week.  I’ll post more about it later this week.  It turned out quite lovely, I must say!

Because this is a customer quilt I’d planned to hand sew the binding; you may have heard me say in the past that I absolutely detest hand sewing so you’ll understand when I tell you I wasn’t looking forward to the task.  A quilter friend of mine hates adding borders so I traded her hand sewing my binding for adding her borders.  All in all not a bad trade, but I’m glad it’s now finished so I can take a break and work on my own projects.  I think I’m even going to be able to enter a quilt into the BBQ Quilt Show in September!  I haven’t made a quilt of my own for about 3 years, so this is quite exciting!

As I was finishing up the borders on my friend’s quilt yesterday, my iron turned itself off.   That’s the nature of the automatic shut-off so no biggie, right?  I jiggled and nothing happened.  Then I moved the cord around and the light slowly, and dimly, came back on, then the iron started working again perfectly.  Then it shut off again.  More jiggling with no results.  More cord moving with results.  I remembered that the cord near the base had felt pretty warm, even hot, earlier, too.  Uh oh!  I have a fire hazard on my hands!

I’ve had my iron, a Shark Professional model GI490, for about 7 years and I love it!  You can see that the finish on the handle is even starting to wear off.  How am I ever going to replace it?  I’ve seen all of the online requests asking for recommendations for an iron which I’ve blissfully ignored. 

I knew, of course, that because of the amount of time since the manufacture of my unit that I wouldn’t be able to purchase the same model again so I started my search on ConsumerReports.com. The reviews I found on the next model after it are terrible!  I was shocked and truly disappointed.  Eventually, though, I narrowed down my choices and went shopping.  Nothing beats an in-person inspection.  And you know what I came home with?  Another Shark! 

The Shark Ultimate Professional model GI505 is the next model up from the model with the bad reviews.  It looks and feels very similar to my old model so I suspect I’m going to really like it, all except the size of the top button that selects the temperature.  That’s the main button in the use of this iron so maybe I’ll get used to it and the size won’t bother me.

None of the other irons felt quite right, probably because I’ve used the same iron for over 7 years and have truly enjoyed it.  ConsumerReports.com has this model highly rated, although there are no reviews on it yet, but time will tell.

Updating the Quilt Cave

Yesterday I was finally able to start the project I'd planned for the 4th of July weekend, which was rearranging and decluttering the quilting studio.

I'm embarrassed to show how bad it's gotten, but I'm proud of my progress.  I’d love to put recessed shelving in between the studs on this wall.  It’s a load bearing wall so I can’t just knock it down!

I love my cutting station!  But I needed to get this out of the way in order to move the green cabinet from the corner to the long wall.

Now, I’ve removed that white table underneath and I really like how open it is.  I have a bunch of stuff that might have to go back there, but I’m hoping no.

One of my goals is to create another workstation for when I have friends over.  I put my smallest Singer cabinet in that space, the one that holds the 401.  I have plans to refinish the cabinet that holds the Anker RZ to put into that space but it won’t fit right now when the top gets opened up so I will work on that for another time.

Here’s a link to my online album, showing my progress.  There’s more to come!

https://plus.google.com/photos/100048539382016509935/albums/6033321651017292881?authkey=COmfxaP5sKOXlQE

June was a busy month!

What have I been up to?  There’s so much to tell!  While you haven’t been hearing from me I took lots of pictures and thinking “that would make a great post!”…and then not posting it.

All of the expensive things seem to have happened at the end of June.  We got our house painted and then both DH and I had dental work.  Of course, about that time is when his vehicle needed over $1500 worth of car repairs.  Oh boy.

As for the fun stuff, the first quilt you haven’t seen was absolutely darling.  I got a couple of photos of it while it was on the frame, but forgot to get photos of the entire quilt.  How does THAT happen?

I met a new friend, Maryon, at a Quilters’ Schoolhouse quilting class put on by Boise Basin Quilters and we made an awesome string quilt for donation.  We had a heck of a time deciding on which border to add, and we eventually chose the dark green one.

I was contacted by a new quilter, Katie, to quilt her first quilt.  She thought she was picking an easy project, and she did a GREAT job, but I told her that was NOT an easy project!  Do you see all those straight lines she had to keep in place?  And that color arrangement?

We picked a blue and yellow variegated thread, which looked awesome, but I hadn’t realized that it was a size 17.  Why would I have something different in my thread stash?  Let me just say that size 17 is about the size of a rope, when it comes to thread, and I ended up picking out an entire bobbin’s worth of quilting.  That took about 4 hours.  I ordered some King Tut thread from Superior and it turned out beautifully!

I also finished the spinning project I started while I was at Mom’s house over Memorial Day weekend.  It sure turned out differently than what I expected.  I’m really proud of myself because I actually finished a project!  Not only that, the yarn is balanced, which means it’s not twisting back on itself when it’s hanging on the hanger.  And this is only my third spinning project!  I’ve been asked “what are you going to make with this?” and the answer is “I have no idea.”  I just picked it because it was pretty. 

One aspect of finishing a yarn is to set it by soaking it in hot water.  This means the twist in the fiber won’t come out and the wool “blooms”.  It’s pretty cool!  I checked on mine this morning and it’s still a little damp where the cotton yarn is holding it together so I’ll be hanging it outside today.  Boise has been close to 100 degrees lately, that should do it.

And yesterday, I started Tour de Fleece 2014!  This is my first TdF, and I’m using Gritty Knits LeGrand Boucle merino, which arrived yesterday afternoon.  In case you’re unfamiliar with Tour de Fleece, it is an online spinning event that mirrors the Tour de France, including rest days.  They spin, we spin.  A real spinning-themed spin-along.

My goal is to spin at least 15 minutes a day.  Since I’m on vacation over the 4th of July weekend, and we were watching a movie, I spun for about an hour and a half yesterday!

I’m having trouble making a consistent single because I’d used my jumbo flyer to spin the singles on my previous project (I won’t do that again!) and have changed back to the traditional flyer, but after about an hour of spinning my normal technique is starting to come back to me.

This isn’t a colorway I’d normally pick. The red/orange is on either end of the braid and the brown/yellow is in the middle. I decided to alternate the strips of color in my spinning, we’ll see what happens!