Valentine’s Day came and went rather peacefully here. ITMan and I shopped for a couple of things for the girls between house viewings on Monday, and then when GuitarGirl put her guitar in my trunk on Tuesday evening before her lesson, she said “Way to hide the Valentine’s presents, Mom!” I’d forgotten all about them by the time we got home Monday night, and I never took them out of the car!

At that point, I said to heck with it and left it all there, since nobody else was going to be peeking in the trunk again before Thursday. The girls liked their little “I ♥ you” presents, and ITMan came home from work with a balloon bouquet of flower-shaped balloons for all of us. He’s such a sweetie!

We tried to go out to dinner at our current favorite restaurant, but they were closed for vacation, so we headed for the mall to have pizza and hit MediaMarkt for a few electronic-type purchases. Since we now know we’ll be here in Germany for another 3-5 years, we decided it was safe to buy a new cordless phone, electric toothbrush, toaster oven, and hair trimmer, and then ITMan decided he should have a new iron as well to replace all of the hand-me-downs he has received from other people when they move back to the States. Nothing like a mad dash through the electronics store to get the blood pumping and lighten the wallet! Read the rest of this entry »

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What do you do with sewing machine needles that have been used, but aren’t ready to be thrown away? If you have to change the needle for one of a different size, where do you put the one you take out of the machine? It’s best not to put it back in the package with the new needles, because then when you need a really “new new” one, you won’t know which ones are new and which ones have been used already.

Here’s the quick, easy and cheap fix:

Stick your slightly used needles into a tomato pincushion, which can be found almost anywhere for about $1.00, or you can get the extra large model for a bit more. You can make it even easier to re-use these needles at a later date if you mark the pincushion on the top with numbers using a pigma pen, so that you can organize the needles by size. Read the rest of this entry »

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For many years I’ve used plastic tags and a tagging gun to baste quilts together for quilting. In fact, this is the only method I’ve ever used, since I purchased the tagging gun when i was making crafts to sell (BQ) and needed to tag them with prices and info. When I started quilting, I heard about the tagging guns and tags that had just become popular with quilters, so rather than going out and purchasing hundreds of safety pins to baste my quilt, I dug out the tagging gun and tags I already had.

There was only one small problem: the tags I had were 3/4″ and had a fat end and a skinny end, instead of 1/4″ with two skinny ends like what was sold for quilts. If I’d used them the way other quilters were using them, straight through the quilt from top to bottom, my quilts would have been quite unstable, with too much potential for movement between the layers. I decided to try putting the tags in like you would use a safety pin or a straight pin, into all the layers and back out again, so that both ends of the tag are on the top of the quilt.

It worked great, with the added bonus that I didn’t need to buy one of those funny grid things that lifts the quilt up slightly off the table or floor that you need if you use the shorter tags, since you have to put them straight through the quilt. I could always tell if the needle (and thence the tag) went all the way through the quilt because I could feel when the needle hit the floor or table under the quilt.

The quilt is secure and the layers don’t shift any more than they would with safety pins. Both ends of the tag are on the top of the quilt so they are easy to see and quilt around and the tags are easy to remove without digging around under the quilt for the other end after you cut it apart. Cutting the tags out of the quilt is safer too, since they’re longer and you can keep the scissors farther away from the quilt surface.

One thing I must point out: You may find that the needle on the tagging gun makes a bigger hole than a safety pin might, or causes a snaggy looking bit on the fabrics. I’ve been told this repeatedly over the years by quilters who tried the gun and don’t like it. Yes, sometimes it can do that, but I think the trick is to be very careful with your needle, and replace it at the first hint of a burr or bent tip. Treat the needle very carefully, just like you treat the needles on your machine; maybe even more carefully, since they cost much more per needle to replace. Read the rest of this entry »

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