Summer Has gone, Yipppeeeee!

That is what most of us say here in Arizona especially in the Phoenix area where in August summer seems never to end. But finally daytime temps in the 90's and even 80's and evenings and mornings are lovely. We can at last take a deep breath of Fall air and begin to live fully again rather than from one air conditioned place to the next!
Where has the year gone? Second week in October already and the holiday times are fast approaching beginning with halloween.
The past month or two I have been getting acquainted with my Prodigy Quilter, a bit of a transition from the A-1 but as I quilt with it more I am surer than ever I made a very wise decision. We have had a few challenges, we added a new encoder to get the stitch regulator -SR- working beautifully and a new hook has helped with tension.

Last night I finished quilting the Giant Star quilt and it's ready for binding.

Quilted with Baptist Fan design, always a great choice for traditional piecing.

 Neutral thread and Quilter's Dream Angel in the Request.

 The backing was not long enough so I inserted some leftover blocks from a previous project.

My latest acquisition is an older Pfaff 1222E. When I was visiting my friend in Colorado Springs I sewed on her 40 + year old Pfaff 1222 and loved the sturdiness and quiet operation from the solid German engineering. As I began to look around for one I discovered that they are quite coveted and can bring $400-$500 even in less than working operation. I managed to win one from eBay for $56, shipping for this venerable old lady was $60! But the machine is in excellent condition it looks as if it was barely used.

It had case and accessories, but no foot pedal/power cord. The accessories include a few different feet, bobbins, vintage thread I will not use, and even oil and some original Pfaff machine needles.

Missing also is the extended plate, I will look around and see if I can find one but it doesn't stop me sewing! It also needed a new on/off switch, $15 on eBay, the cord etc I purchased locally. My friend, a vintage sewing machine collector came over to check out the 1222E and declared it a great buy, insides are pristine barely used. We pulled it apart and oiled every moving part, I wish I had taken photos of that process with parts spread all over!

So now for under $200 I have a fine machine that will probably sew for decades-did I really need it? Well, probably not, I think I have nine machines, four antique/vintage, a serger, a 1961 Featherweight made in Edinburgh, Scotland, an 1889 treadle plus a more modern Pfaff and Bernina [both about 15 years old] and the longarm among the number! I am wondering if they have twelve step programs for sewing machine addicts, but it is still cheaper than therapy!
 Last weekend was the four day quilting retreat with my MeetUp group. We stayed in the same retreat house as last year in Lakeside.
It is perfectly set up for quilters and especially caters to a woman's needs. This is the workroom, very large open and airy and bright. Comfortable chairs, tea and coffee facility and homemade gourmet snacks! There is room for eight but again this year we were six in number and that was fine.

I made quite good progress, finishing piecing the CW quilt which was a fairly big job

The odd blocks below turned into a nice baby quilt, originally there were seven from a block drawing at quilt guild meeting, and I added five more and a scrappy little border. I plan to quilt it "modern" because it looks modern to me.

At last year's retreat I had some help to find a way to make some sense of these mistakenly pieced blocks and they stayed that way in need of setting triangles because I could not decide what fabric to use. On route to the retreat last week we stopped at a couple pf quilt shops-I know how that must be a shock to everyone- and found some cute deer fabric which I purchased and now this one is ready for the longarm, it too may get some modern quilting designs.

I pulled out a group of Australian fabrics I had kitted up a couple of years ago and managed to sew some of them up into this little lap quilt, another in line for modern quilting.

The final morning I decided to start on an apron, it's almost finished, probably will not take more than an hour to be done.

We played a dice game with fabrics as the prize, no surprise! This year I won and ended up with 20 FQ's of batiks, a nice addition to my stash.

We were pampered by our amazing hostess with her gourmet food offerings.

Frances is the consummate hostess making us all feel welcome and comfortable

Dinner our final evening was chicken and artichoke lasagne

Salted caramel ice cream pie for dessert, yum!

We enjoyed it all so much that some of us will be returning twice next year.