This and that

Today I decided to get out my Singer 221 featherweight, which I have had for years but have never actually used for a project, and oil and lubricate it.  What a charming piece of machinery, and it's in nearly perfect shape!  Simple but precise.  So easy to care for.  And it stitches beautifully.  It's all ready for my next quilting effort, whenever that may be.  This little Singer is sitting behind her gigandamundo Husqvarna Viking Designer Diamond big sister, but what she lacks in size, she makes up for in beauty.

I tried her out and was very pleased with her performance, but it seemed a bit tedious to have to refer to the markings on the needle plate to gauge the quarter inch, so I rummaged around on ebay and found a good quarter inch foot for her that doesn't have that doggone flange on the side as a  guide.  I hate these when I'm doing half square triangles and the like, but they're good if you're just sewing along a raw edge. 

Another thing I finally finished was hanging curtains in my studio.  We have lived in this house now for three years, and I don't have curtains up anywhere but in the bathrooms and the guest bedrooms.  Our bedroom looks out on the lake and is on the main floor, which reads as the second floor if you look at the house from the lake.  So we don't have communication with any other public rooms or windows that could look in on us, and we just haven't bothered to figure out what we want yet.  But here's a shot of the couch and curtains in the studio now.  One room down, five to go.

This weekend I hope to tackle the curtains in the study, but we're having company again.  Fortunately, it's a single fellow, a friend of hubby's, and they're going to spend the afternoon and evening at the go cart races, so I will have some free time after they leave, which I probably will use on my very patient customer's huge and gorgeous quilt first, and then if there's time left over (hah!) I'll get to those other curtains.

And so the weekend begins....