Weekend update

Saturday I took the raffle quilt to my mom (she loved it). She asked that I bring my sewing machine to hem a few pants she'd been wearing, legs rolled up, or trampling on them... she'd bought herself a machine, but could not get it to work...this is the machine she bought..
Now, my ex-army, brother-in-law has one of these, and he set it up for her, and tested it out on a small piece of fabric. Mom could not get it to work after he left. Well, I did not see this machine until after I'd already sewn the hems of 5 pair of pants and cinched in the waists of 2 skirts.... I pulled that thing out of the box, and read the instructions. I believe the reason she could not get it to work was because she had the lock pushed in. I took the scraps cut from the pants legs and tested it out myself...... man, was I impressed with the skill that my brother-in-law sewed his little sample... I don't know how anyone uses one of these things.... it was quite cumbersome... I could not manage feeding the fabric through it straight...and the fear of running my finger under the needle.... sheesh....
Sunday, I started quilting on my cheapo flannel quilt. It's been sitting around pinned together for a couple of months... lets just say this is going to be a utility quilt all the way.. I've decided that it will be for learning, and just doodling, trying to figure out how to maneuver all that fabric around. I will hopefully be able to see an improvement by the time I get to the last row...I didn't draw a design. The blocks are a roman stripe pattern, so I am just free-hand stitching lines across the perpendicular blocks, and up and down the horizontal blocks, with a few spirals here and there just because I wanted to try it...