Stella Part Two - Together Again

Stella is now all in one piece again and established in her new home!  Doesn't she look beautiful?

With HS coming home for Thanksgiving, I finally decided it was time to remove Stella from her boxes and get her established in her new surroundings (yes, it took me awhile - nothing like procrastination, is there?)

The finish on Stella's cabinet shows a little wear over the 85 years of her life, and I've been toying with the idea of sprucing her up a bit, but I finally decided I like her just the way she is.  You can see here that she was well packaged.  We used a ton of this foam insulation, and wrapped it in plastic wrap, then shaped her box to fit the enclosure we made.

The iron pieces are the most fragile, I'm told, so Dear Sister came up with the idea of doing a cut-out in the foam to protect these fragile parts.  We stacked them together, layered foam on top and bottom, and wrapped the whole stack in plastic wrap and then built a box to fit.  Thank goodness for box cutters and packing tape.

The treadle and the flywheel were packaged in a similar manner in their own separate box.

You have to watch out for the pointy parts.

I asked Bob, the nice man at my local sewing machine store, to put her together for me.  He took her metal parts to his shop, cleaned them up, greased the parts that needed to be greased, oiled the parts that needed to be oiled (apparently they are different - who knew?) and brought them back to me, then proceeded to put her together.  Once he had the legs on the cabinet, he put Stella in, then attached the belt.  I'm glad I asked him to do this.  His price was quite reasonable, and the greasing, oiling, and belt would have taken me hours.  I watched him do the belt - it was a little tricky and required a drill.  I didn't know you could drill through leather.

So here she is.  Now all I have to do is get my rhythm back.  I haven't used her for at least 40 years - and I'm not sure anyone has.  My sister commented in an email yesterday that she made all her doll clothes on this baby.  I remember embellishing dish towels and making a dress one summer.  And lots of mending.

And Stella will be a lovely reminder of my grandmother and all the summers I spent with her.

Thanks, Gram.

Fun Mail!

It has been quite a while since I did a fun mail post, but there has been some fun mail coming all along.  I'm not sure where I left off, but here are some goodies that have come recently.

I'm still working on my Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt blocks.  I've tortured the members of several bees to accumulate my GMFG blocks.  I figure I need 80 blocks and these 8 bring me to 64.  I'm getting closer!!!

I finally chose the color for the connecting hexies and ordered a bolt from Westwood Acres.  I'm not going to count how many of those I need - I think I'd be really discouraged.  I'm sure it's in the hundreds.  And all the same =( but I'll get through it.  And my friend has offered to help.  Yay for good friends!

Nope.  Not the one with the pin.  That one is just too bold, I think.  I chose 9900-24.  It's a bright yellow, but I don't think it will take away from the blocks. 

And I've gotten a bunch of the basket blocks for my basket quilt from the ladies in the Bee Awesome Bee. Many, many thanks to them!  These blocks have been sitting in the WIP pile for at least two years, so it's nice to finally see some progress on this one.  This is a finish-it bee, so I should be ready to put this quilt top together when I get the rest of these!!!  Yay!  I'm starting to get really excited about this quilt.

And in other news, I talked to the sewing machine doctor on Monday and Stella is ready to come home.  He even offered to come by my house and put the rest of her together.  He says when you know what you're doing, it doesn't take long.  I'm sure she looks much better now!

Woo-hoo!  I can't wait. 

Stella Part 1: The Unveiling

NOTE:  Today is the last day for the Bowls with Borders Blog Hop giveaway.  I will choose the winner tomorrow after work. 

So if you read this post, you will know that I spent part of my vacation this summer at my sister's carefully packing my grandmother's treadle sewing machine to ship it 3000 miles from Seattle to Florida.  I've decided to call her Stella.  A fitting name, I think, since that was my grandmother's name - her original owner.  And Stella Singer sounds pretty sweet.  It has a kind of old - timey charm, don't you think?

I hope you will find this post interesting.  I was actually kind of thrilled to remove Stella from her cardboard prison.  She has, after all, been given free reign up til now.  But she needed to be protected on her long journey.  Lots of hazards for a single girl traveling alone on a cross-country trip.

I'm sure that my sister thought thinks I am crazy, wanting to transport Stella such a distance, but she was a wonderful sport about the whole ordeal, and with her gift for research and her aptitude for all things spacial, came up with the perfect plan.  I didn't take very good photos of the packing, so I'm going to be very detailed in the un-packing.

First, there is the box.  It's a Home Depot medium shipping box cut to size.

Lots and lots of foam insulation in this box.  We used 1 inch construction foam for most of our packing material.  My sis is great with the hacksaw cutting the pieces to just the right size. 

And some styrofoam insulation.  Lynda cut it to fit perfectly.  See?  I told you she's really, really good at this stuff.  Doesn't it look tidy?

And underneath all the insulation is some polyester quilt batting.  Neither one of us use this stuff any more. 

And some high density upholstery foam - with a Target shopping bag thrown in for good measure.  The Target bag is holding the foam around the wheel, while the other miscellaneous bag is holding the foam around the machine.

And so it begins.  I pulled out the packing materials one by one.

And created quite a mess.

Until I got her alone in the box.

There she is, still shrouded in her most protective layers.

Lots of protective foam around her sensitive parts.

And a special piece of foam to protect the spindle.

And now she's just left with her "cast" as my friend called it.

Two layers of foam underneath her to protect her bottom.  Yup, she's pretty dirty.  But she's been sitting unused for at least 30 years and sitting in my sister's garage for 3 years.  I'd probably be dirty too.

We cut special holes in the foam so her gears wouldn't break.

There she is - free of all her restraints.  Now she's off to the doctor.

I was totally excited when he gave me the estimate:

$58 for the cleaning, including the outside.  (While you should never use WD-40 inside a sewing machine, apparently its a great cleaner for the cast iron outside.  Who knew?)

$6.95 for her new belt (a very inexpensive fashion accessory, I believe!)

$.95 for the rubber piece on the bobbin winder.

For a grand total of $66 plus tax.

Far less expensive than I thought she'd be.

Unfortunately, with WH unable to help me put the cabinet back together, it may be November before I get her all assembled.  But I've made a great start, and I'll be content with that.

For now.

More Souvenirs

NOTE:  If you haven't entered the Milestones Giveaway, go here.  

Giveaway ends Wednesday, August 15, 2012.  

Winner will be chosen Thursday, August 16.

One day last week, I posted the souvenirs from my vacation a few weeks ago.  Yup!  All fabric!

And adorable photos of my grands.

 Oh, yeah - and an antique sewing machine.

 But I digress....  Anyway, my Flickr friend Krista (and now friend in real life!) and I met up in Seattle and went to a little quilt store in North Bend, Washington that was going out of business.  Fabric there was ON SALE! and you know I can't resist that, and bought some souvenirs.  These souvenirs were not in my original post.  Krista wondered where they were.  Frankly, I had to go hunting.  They weren't with the other fabric and random things I had brought home. 

Aha!  I found them.

So here are the REST of the souvenirs from my vacation.

 Pretty, huh?  

I actually have plans for a couple of these pieces.  The rest?

Well, I'm sure they will come in handy for something!

{What I Did on} My Summer Vacation!

I know it's been a little bit quiet around the ol' blog lately, but I've been out of town for a week and all I took with me was my phone - very hard to write blog posts from my phone, I'm afraid.  But a very fun week it was! I don't know that I've ever had a vacation where I actually accomplished everything I set out to do before, but it actually happened this time, and I'm very excited.

After a grueling 29 hours in transit (one of the joys of flying standby, I'm afraid) I finally arrived in Seattle, which was my first stop.  My very kind brother in law collected me from the airport and we began our adventure.  You see, when my grandmother passed away, her very cool Singer treadle sewing machine that both my sister and I sewed on in our early years, was left to me.  However, I live some 3000 miles away.  When my cousin decided to purchase and remodel her house, my sister rescued the machine and has been storing it for me in her garage for two or three years.  I had hoped to get it last summer, but we had a wedding instead.

The cabinet is a little worn, but the machine looks to be in wonderful shape.  Of course, I'll need to buy a new belt, and probably take it in for a little tune up, but preliminary indications are that it is in great condition.  And would you believe it has all of its original parts, including the manual?  Sadly, my photos were geared much more toward how to put it back together, than how cool it is, but I promise to do a better job of chronicling the restoration process than I did the disassembly.

Just love these old cast iron parts - they are truly works of art!

So, the first two (non-traveling) days of my vacation were spent dismantling and packaging the sewing machine to ship home.  Despite all of my nightmares about rusted bolts and impossible screws, it came apart fairly easily, particularly after said BIL ran to the hardware store for some penetrating oil and patiently tap-tap-tapped on the reluctant bolt that wouldn't come out.

My sister is a very organized kind of girl, and she had thoroughly researched various methods of dismantling and packaging treadle machines to encourage their safe arrival at their destination.  Accordingly, we spent all of the second day packaging the machine (thank goodness for take-out meals!)  While there were several promising methods described online, we finally decided on a plan that used copious quantities of 1-1/2 inch foam insulation and lots and lots of plastic film.  We'll know by the end of the week if we chose the right method.

Tuesday morning early we were at the post office, which agreed to ship my new treasure home for only $122.00 insured.  I was actually amazed, since early estimates from FedEx and UPS were right around $1000.

 I can't wait until it arrives!

And Tuesday afternoon, my friend Krista and her 3 adorable little boys came and got me and we did some fabric shop hopping and had lunch!  It was so, so fun to meet her.  We've been conversing online and texting for weeks, so it was great fun to get together in person.  She's making me some hexie blocks for our Sew Fun Bee!!!  I'm so close to having enough for a quilt.  Time to think about the connecting rows.  But I digress...

Wednesday morning, I headed off to Salt Lake City to visit the grands.  In fact, I got lots of baby love, as their mommy and daddy left mid-day Thursday to attend a wedding in Colorado.

Abby and I went out to run some errands (and give mommy some peace to pack) early Thursday.  Of course, McDonald's PlayPlace was the first stop.  In something of a major miracle, said granddaughter ate 2-1/2 pancakes.  I was shock-ed and amaz-ed, as she doesn't ever eat much.

Then we ran some errands and came home to take care of her brother so mom and dad could head out.  Little brother wasn't too sure that the stuff Grandma was trying to feed him was edible, but after a little bit of reluctance, his appetite overcame his taste-buds, and we got along just fine.

Friday, we started out with a haircut, and then had a great play day, with pony rides on the carousel...

and a visit to the splash pad (that's Abby in the middle in orange)...

And lunch with Uncle Sean

Saturday, Uncle Sean joined us again, and we went to the Spanish Fork Fiesta Days carnival.  While brother took a nap in the stroller...

Big Sister went on all the "little kid" rides (except the motorcycles - no interest at all in the motorcycles, for some reason), including the Ferris Wheel

Intrepid little soul, isn't she?  There were adults freaking out about the Ferris Wheel, and she just sat there calmly and took it all in.

Unfortunately, Grandma had to leave before mommy and daddy got back, so Uncle Sean (make that bachelor Uncle Sean) got to babysit for about 10 hours on Sunday.  I think it might have been a bit more than he bargained for, but I hope he hasn't sworn off having kids forever!

But for me, it was a great vacation.  Who wouldn't love spending 4 days with these cuties?

And just in case you are in need of a little baby love, here's a video that always makes me smile.