Mon Oeuvre ~ Farmer's Wife 1930's Sampler Quilt progress: Block #6 April

"April"

The last month and a half have been a test of my patience with the company that was doing my maintenance service (warranty) work on my Pfaff sewing machine. I'm so glad that I have my Vintage machines, so that I could work on some projects. The "Strippy Weave" quilt was put on hold because I really want to do my big quilt projects on the Pfaff. Also, the Quiltville Mystery quilt is coming up and I wanted to get it in tip top shape for the mystery quilt sewing. I had purchased my machine in Feb. of 2017 and was a little late on it's first year maintenance check up. Anyway what should have been a 2 week trip at the longest turned into a long ordeal. 

First I was told that the motherboard had fried and needed to be replaced. I thought that was curious since it was working fine when I took it in. 

The next call (voicemail) said that when the put in the new motherboard the display screen no longer worked. So I called the store and asked what was going on. They contacted the company that does the warranty work, not long after that I received a call from the person in charge of the warranty work. He said that one of their workers had unfortunately ruined the motherboard when she had put the machine back together after it's regular maintenance check. Then when she installed the new motherboard something happened again and that caused the display issue. He assured me that since it was under warranty they would send it to me in a repaired condition and since I still had 3 years of warranty left that should take care of any future issues that they might have caused. I reluctantly said o.k. finish the repairs and send it back to me. 

The final straw (for me) came with another phone call, the keypad doesn't work. We will order a new one and send it to you as soon as it is repaired.

Needless to say I was very upset by this time. I told the store my terms: I wanted a new machine and my "full" warranty back. Since the warranty service company kept breaking my machine I no longer trusted their work. The clerk at the store told me she would talk to the manager and see what could be worked out.

The manager called me and said she was very sorry and that this reflects on their store even though the warranty work is done off site by another company. I told her I wasn't upset with the store but I wasn't happy with the warranty service company and their shoddy workmanship.

Long story short - I have a new Pfaff  (same model as my other one) with  "full" 4 year warranty. 

Happiness abounds!!

I'm so thankful that my local store's manager was also appalled at the service and was willing to make it right for me.

My new Pfaff~

Picture of the week ~ Hallowe'en Season

Hallowe’en decor

"Oh dear, you may think there's one of those errant apostrophes that slobs sprinkle throughout the language. Why would the dictionary give in and enter that apostrophized monstrosity? 

Surprise: that apostrophe is actually original to the word."

You can read about it here: Merriam Webster

Picture of the week ~ Raven and Salmon Woman

Semiahmoo, Whatcom County park

Picture of the week ~ Public Art?!

Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary

Today we decided to go birding in British Columbia. I had been to Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary  a couple of years ago, but my husband had never been there. I was hoping he would enjoy it as much as I had. It was a fairly quiet day there today, not many people and not as many birds as I'd seen before. The winter migration is just beginning so they are anticipating the return of the Snow Geese and Swans any day now. I found out that the Alaksen National Wildlife area overlaps part of the Reifel migratory bird sanctuary property. "The Alaksen NWA is part of the Fraser River delta, an area of roughly 67,000 hectares recognized as an internationally important migration stop-over and wintering area for a large number of migratory birds, along the Pacific coast.....the delta attracts up to 1.4 million birds from Siberia to south America each year. No other site in Canada supports such a diversity and number of birds in winter, and no comparable site exists along the Pacific coast between California and Alaska." I also read on their web page that "one of the spectacular sights there is the occurrence of Snow Geese in concentrated flocks of numbers exceeding 25,000 beginning in October".

When we arrived we paid our "senior rate" entrance fee, bought our bags of duck feed and began walking the trails. 

The Mallard ducks are very used to being fed, they would waddle along quickly towards us in groups. For some reason in my minds eye I pictured a 1930's gangster in my mind every time we would encounter them. I would see the lead duck as Edward G. Robinson their leader saying: (insert tough guy voice here) "it's a stick up see, give us all the seed you have and be quick about it". They made me laugh every time we saw them.

The Wood ducks were just as silly. They loved being fed & I loved looking at them, they just don't look real to me.

We made our way to a couple of the bird blinds, the tower and then walked the outer trail.

We saw a beautiful resident? lone Swan

and we tried to identify some of the ducks in the ponds. I was only sure of the Mallards and Wood ducks. Between the two of us we identified the: Pin-tail, Coot, Merganser, Teal, Wigeon and Shoveler. We also saw a Peregrine falcon, Marsh hawk, some Canada geese, a Flicker, a Downy woodpecker, Red-wing blackbird and lots of small birds singing in the bushes.

Some signs of fall in the trees along the trail.

Also, lots of colorful but poison. Mushrooms.

There were lots of ponds to walk around and several signs placed here & there to help with identifying the birds.

One more walk by & feeding of the Wood Ducks❤

As we were walking to our car and preparing to leave we saw our treat of the day.

3 Sand hill cranes!!

We walked about 4 1/2 miles and enjoyed the sun, the views, the birds singing and the mobster ducks on the rampage for seed!

I took sooo many pictures, these are just a few from our day. I hope you enjoyed looking at them too!

Picture of the week ~ Paddle

Mon Oeuvre ~ Farmer's Wife 1930's Sampler Quilt progress: Block #5 Anne

It's been awhile since I've looked at the Farmer's Wife 1930's Sampler Quilt I'm doing, May, to be exact. Time sure flies. It was fun to sew with my 1928 Vintage handcrank Singer again. This is the machine that I've designated to use for this quilt.

Anyway I looked and saw that I was on block #5 "Anne". I printed out the foundation paper piecing (FPP) pdf templates and the Gnome Angel tutorial. I then chose the fabrics and began cutting and attempting to FPP according to the piecing template. I ripped out my stitches a few times as I saw that I wasn't getting the pattern to look the same as the finished block in the book, but I just couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I thought, I'll just do it this way and at least it will be done but my brain wasn't satisfied with it so I decided to do some studying. I remembered that on the previous blocks I'd  had difficulty with the "mirror image" concept that goes with foundation paper piecing, so I studied the tutorials and info. yet again. I gave it another try and remembered how to do it. after I sewed my fabric onto the paper, trimmed and flipped it horizontally, each "triangle
 wedge template did match the finished block in the book!

The photo below shows my "take two" version. The pattern is correct in this one. Tada!!

The photo below shows my "take one" version. As you can see the "pinwheel" in the center is different from the second version. I also had to sew around the squares in this version as the seams wanted to come apart.

I didn't want to do a "take two" as the first one was so trying for me, but I'm glad I studied the technique and figured it out. I'm very pleased with my "take two" version!