Great Granny Along: Yarn Basket

I finished up my yarn basket last night and I'm happy to say it's made entirely of scraps! :) Although I will confess that I made a trip to the fabric store the other day and got a few quarter yards. But this quilt is for my sister who loves green and I needed more green in my stash. That's a good excuse, right? ;)

There's still time to join in with the fun. Click on over to get the companion PDF and start sewing.

Great Granny Sew Along

I'm so excited to start the Great Granny Sew Along! I've been wanting to do a sew along (and actually sew along, not doing it months later) for a while now. I've loved the granny square blocks since I first laid eyes on them. They are so cute! When Lori announced on her blog the sew along and I saw her finished quilt I knew I wanted to make one. My sister crochets, so I think this will be a great gift for her. :)

Lori's finished quilt top

If you want to sew along with me and everyone else check out the following links:

Bee in my Bonnet*
Jolly Jabber*
Great Granny Sew Along info page
*Check out these links for yardage requirements

I also included the sew along button to the right for easy access.

You need a copy of Lori's newest book to sew along

 It runs for 5 weeks and I'm going to do my very best to keep up with it. I'm digging into my stash and scrap bins for this one. I'm hoping that I won't have to buy any fabric (except for backing and maybe borders).

Check back to see my progress. :)

Vintage Love

I just have to share my new vintage treasures.

I found this circa 1958 Singer 403A at my local Savers a few weeks back. It came with the wrong power cord and foot pedal, and was very dirty. But the price couldn't be beat.

 Yes, seriously it was $7.99!! I had to take her home. She's missing a few parts but a quick search online brought me to a few websites with replacements. I was able to clean up her exterior with good old fashioned rubbing alcohol but I haven't gotten to the inner workings yet. Truth be told, I'm a little intimidated. But I plan on doing the best I can to get her running again and if worse comes to worse, I'll take her to a professional.


I found this beauty about a week ago at the same Savers. I knew right away what it was when I saw it and thought it would be perfect for my little Singer.

Check it out! The front drops down for free arm exposure. How neat is that? I've never seen a cabinet like this before. I was able to find two others (here & here) with the exact same cabinet online, and one with a very similar cabinet. But there's no markings on it anywhere, so I have no idea who made it and what machine it was originally designed for. (Update 3/17/15: this desk was designed by Singer for their Athena 2000 model back in 1976!)

 There's a bit of repair work to be done on some of the trim and there's a piece missing on the top (it's supposed to conceal the machine when not in use) but other than that it's a great little work table.

 And of course the price can't be beat! :) Funny thing is that the day I bought it they were running a half off sale on grey ticket items. I had no idea when I took it to the register, so I paid $7.50 for it! I can't wait to get it fixed and painted. It's going to be so nice having this extra storage and a spot for my 403A.

After I brought home the sewing machine, I began researching this particular little Singer. Come to find out, it's a really great little work horse! Seriously, Google it and there's a few blogs with the history and reviews of it. It's really an amazing little machine that was one of the first to have a lot of the features we see on machines from today.

Like I said there's a few websites that sell replacement parts for it but on eBay I found this box with the manual and a ton of accessories.

It came with 8 CAM discs and a ton of presser feet. I scored this auction for $15.50 plus shipping. So far, my most expensive purchase but so worth it. I look forward to getting this machine up and running to try out all the presser feet and CAM discs.

Grandpa's Shirts Turned Pillowcases

Remember Grandpa's quilt? Well, I still had quite a few whole shirts leftover and some of my mother-in-law's siblings who wanted a little something of their father's too. I decided on making pillowcases for the siblings (since more quilts would be a bit much for me) and came upon this inspiration on Pinterest.

click here for tutorial

It was a really quick and easy project, and I ended up making 7 pillowcases total. I still had 3 corners of the white handkerchief used in the quilt plus my mother-in-law gave me another blue handkerchief, so all 7 pillowcases had a corner of a handkerchief sewn into the front pockets.

All 7 of the pillowcases

All of them got the same tag as the quilt

3 of them used scraps from the quilt backing

Stuffed with an 18" square pillow form

She flew to Iowa for spring break and delivered the pillowcases to her brothers and sisters. They all loved them, which makes my heart so happy. I think at this point I only have a few shirt fronts left since the backs were used to make the quilt. So I may make a few more of these pillowcases using the quilt backing scraps for the back piece. And then all the remaining shirt pieces will end up being cut into squares for future projects. But for now everyone has a little piece of Grandpa so there's no rush to whip up another big project any time soon.