Keeping Busy!

We went to Oklahoma, June 21-27.  Our youngest son and his wife flew down from Anchorage, for a wedding.  We were his chauffeur and rental car for the week.  We stayed with friends, and I brought a machine, and some projects, but, I didn't get as much sewing in as I planned.  Hubby had to work from our friends home for several days, while we were there, so, I figured, since my son would have my car, I'd have lots of time for stitching.

I did get started on a baby quilt for a friends great-great- grandson, that is due in November.  I fussy cut some cute baby jungle animals, and, made some churn dash blocks.  I just love churn dash blocks for baby quilts.  I made 2 of each animal in each block.

12  12" blocks make a perfect size for a baby quilt.  I'll back it with Minkee.  All of this is from my stash (including the Minkee).

Thursday evening was Ladies Crafting at my church.  I didn't want to take a machine this time, so, I pulled out an old project that I won last year, and started on it.  I won these blocks from Kathy at K's Qwilting Korner last October. I found embroidery floss to match the fabrics in the blocks, last fall, and, its all been sitting in the bucket, just waiting for me to pull it out and work on it.  Well, I've been stitching away since Thursday evening.  I stitched for several hours on Sunday.  Our dogs don't like the fireworks, so, I turned on the DVD player in my sewing room, and locked us all in there, to muffle as much fireworks sounds as I could.  After all that time stitching, this block is almost done.  I'm sure there will be another marathon session of stitching tonight, too, since there will be more fireworks going on in our neighborhood.

almost all stitched

Last summer, at the 2015 Michigan TOGA, I won a 1881 Singer 12 treadle off the raffle table.  The machine was frozen, and someone had painted 'antiquing' paint on the already antique treadle base.  I got the machine head un-frozen last fall, after lots of work.  I also got a shuttle and bobbin for it.  I couldn't test it out, since I didn't have needles for it.  Well, Tina sent me some needles for this machine.  Now I HAD to finish restoring this treadle.

1881 Singer 12 treadle, with the ugly 'antiquing' paint on the base

1881 Singer 12 treadle head before any cleaning

I've been stripping the wooden base for a couple of days now.  It took 3 trips to Home Depot before I finally found a product that would actually strip the paint off.  I tried 2 different 'Environmentally Safe' products first.  Waste of time and money, since neither one even started to strip anything.  Third time was the charm.

top of un-stripped treadle, with the antiquing paint on it

up close, you can see where they painted this with the fiddlebase machine still in the cabinet.  I cleaned the paint off the edge of the machine when I cleaned it last fall. 

only place on the whole base that looked almost nice, with that ugly 'antiquing' paint on it

they only did part of the drawer cabinet, where the treadle irons go

front of drawers with paint on them

I forgot to take pictures of the coffin top lid before I stripped it.  I'd forgotten it when I stripped the treadle base.  The coffin lid is broken is several places. and, I'll repair it after it is stripped and sanded.  You can see the ugly paint on the coffin lid in the first treadle picture.

Here is what the base and coffin lid look like now, after stripping.  I still need to sand several areas before I can stain the wood.

bottom of coffin lid, after removing the paint, unfortunately, it took most of the decal off, too, since they painted heavily over it

top of coffin lid, after removing the paint

top of treadle base, after removing the paint

This is the product that I used.

Yes, I used chemically safe gloves.  Unfortunately, I kept getting a bit of the stripper on my arm, above the gloves.  It didn't burn on Saturday, when I got it on my arms, but, it did this morning. OUCH!

chemical burn on my arm from the stripper

Today is the last 'cool' and 'dry' day around here, so, this project won't get much done on it in the next week.

I want to finish this treadle so that I can display and hopefully use this treadle at the next Lyon's Farm Fall Festival, in September.  I didn't get to be in this festival last year, since I was in Texas.  I have lots of new (to me) machines to display this time.