Holiday Project Sort of Morning

This is a different kind of Saturday morning than I'd planned.  I thought there would be a grandboy waking up and wanting to play Chopped and watch videos and ask a million questions about Minecraft, none of which I could answer.  With the snow yesterday, he didn't come and instead partied it up at Nora's birthday party.  From the report I got, he had a very good time and didn't torment the girls.  And five little girls braved the weather and showed up.

So, this morning I could do what my heart has been longing for:  some little mindless holiday projects.  I've been doing some labor-intensive sewing projects in the past few weeks, including making a dress just like one someone already had and altering a Mother of the Groom dress.  So this morning it was nice to just press a few flour sack towels (where did I get these?  They are really nice, wish I had more like it) and press the Start button on my machine.

Lesson for the day:  I almost never hoop anything any more, just hoop the stabilizer, using a temporary basting spray, and place the item to be embroidered on top.  The lines around the design in the picture are basting lines that will be cut out.  If you have this feature on your machine, pull your bobbin thread out to make a 6" tail, and don't skip the basting step.  And if you don't have a basting feature, consider carefully placing a few pins OUT of the embroidery area.  Placement is so much easier using this method.

I was admiring a new machine the other day and was especially envious of the undo button in the embroidery edit screen.  How nice would that be?  And last night, when I glanced down at my machine, there it was, right above the hoop size. 

I looked at the manual and it wasn't there when the machine was new, so it must have been an upgrade.  I was so happy that the upgrade featured an easy way to set up for free motion quilting that I didn't look much beyond that, other than to admire the new stitches.  SO, lesson number two:  do your machine upgrades, if they're available, and pay attention to the goodies you're actually upgrading.  I'm always surprised at the people in classes who haven't upgraded, which is often just about everyone.  It isn't hard and you get some cool new stuff.