Reba's Quilts and Machines

Singer Trapezoid Cabinet #74, original bench and 301 short bed machine I purchased this machine from a lady in Chicago.  She was having an estate sale for her mother who passed away in 2018.  On the last day of the sale, first thing in the morning, I drove to the home, on a Sunday.  I had emailed her about the machine when I found it on craigslist.  Because the sale was actually over that day, and the machine hadn't sold, she let me have the machine, bench and cabinet for $75.  She could tell how excited I was to have it.  She told me that she had sewed her prom dress on the machine. Here are my photos:  This is the original tan 301 above, and the original #74 trapezoid cabinet, below:

Louis Vuitton Clutch zipper replacement and repair May 2, 2017 In 2017, in advance of my friend's move to Australia, I decided to repair her favorite Louis Vuitton wristlet/clutch.  This is an authentic Louis Vuitton.  I am a huge believer in recycling and upcycling, so I searched for a purse at Goodwill that would have an acceptable zipper and hardware, as I wanted something coordinating with the traditional LV monogram colors.  It had to be the correct size and the correct color, a tan or brown to coordinate with the LV leather. After searching for several weeks, I found a fabric purse with coordinating brown leather and a coordinating tan/brown zipper and acceptable gold metal accents.  I carefully seam-ripped both the original purse and the LV purse.  As many of you know, the lining of the authentic LV purse is a tan suede leather, so it can easily rip.  Also, as many of you know who have sewn, you do not pin leather before sewing, the proper method is to glue baste an

In October of 2018, I purchased a Jones Swan Neck Sewing machine from France, on eBay.  The purpose of selecting this machine is that when restored, it is quite beautiful.  I intended on taking a class from Ray Elkins of Sew Purty workshops, in Elkhart, Indiana.  Ray teaches you to tear down the machine, soak off rust, clean and polish the paint, clean and polish metal parts, oil parts and put the machine back together Here are the before photos: Here are some after photos, after taking the weekend retreat with Ray Elkins: Close up of the cleaned up logo overall machine

T-Shirt Quilts I created three t-shirt quilts in memory of my mother in law Brenda Sanford.  My sister-in-law Shelly (Michelle) Sanford sent me a large box of her t-shirts.  It was pretty clear that I had enough t-shirts for several quilts.  So I sorted the t-shirts into color groups.  As it turns out, I ended up with three piles of shirts.  One of the piles was generally in the green, teal and purple family, one of the groups was in the red, white and blue family, and one of the groups was generally pink, rose and gray. I backed each logo with fusible interfacing, then "fussy" cut each logo out using a cutting board and rotary cutter.  Each t-shirt was bordered with a complimentary fabric, to show off the colors of that t-shirt.  Then, the t-shirts were arranged in a circular pattern and background piecing was added to keep the arrangement.  I then chose a border fabric to set off and frame the circular pattern of t-shirts, and added an outside border.  My friend DeLoa J