I looked at all the fun feet I could buy for myself not long ago and decided I was going to start buying a few every now and then because they are just so fun! There is a huge amount to choose from out there. I’ll be trying to narrow that list down sooner or later.

The first foot I bought was the Flower Stitch Foot. This is a circular foot that was easy to attach and easy enough, with a slight learning curve, to learn how to use.

I have a low shank machine so I had to unscrew the foot that was on it and slip this one on. It attaches like a walking foot, in that you have to put the long arm over the needle arm. It has foam on the bottom of the foot so you need to drop your feed dogs. That allows the foot to rotate.

There are three determined settings on this foot. An outter ring, a middle ring and an inner ring. Depending on which type of stitch you choose the rings will be close together, even over-lapping, or far apart. You can control not only the stitch width, which is really the length because it’s using the stitch sorta sideways, and the length, which is how close your stitches become when you use this foot.

I suggest you use either a stabilizer or a thick material. Thin material tends to get sucked into the middle, where things can go really wrong. Adjust your pressure foot to it’s highest settings and go slow! Or at least slower than the pell mell type of sewing I usually do. Less chance of the fabric shifting that way.

You start by deciding which ring you want to start on. You will loosen the screw and slide the dial over until the marker in the middle lines up with the mark for the ring you want to make. You can go around as much as you want to make the ring as soft or pop as much as you like. When you have made the ring you like you will then loosen the screw and move the dial and the fabric over.

That was the hard part, the moving the fabric with the dial. It does take a bit of trying it a few times to get it right. Pretty soon though you get the hang of it. The wonky ones have their own charm as well, so it just depends on how perfect you want them.

I’d def say you’d need a marker of some sort, a plan about where you want these to go and you could measure how far apart you want them, or just wing it!

Using your decorative stitches gives you a totally new feel and you can manage a huge amount of differing looks just by the basic stitches on your machine.

A+++ for me. I’m really happy I bought it and have enjoyed playing with it. I can’t wait to finish the project I started with it.

Here’s a couple of samples. You can see my first tries, they aren’t centered well.

First tries with flower stitch foot

Decorative stitches make new and fun flowers!

Last we spoke I was dealing with health issues. Those seem to be doing just fine now thankfully!

My reason for not posting this time was a hurricane. Gustav (or rather the people charting Gustav) kept changing their tunes about where he was headed and we just decided to leave. They did finally make it mandatory but I was out of there either way.

We evacuated and stayed with some of my family in Calera, Alabama. I got to see my mamaw and had my kids farmed out around with friends and family. I love everyone but I so hated to be away for those 6 days. Everything is harder when you are living out of suitcases.

Good news is, my house was fine. Only slight wind damage to roofing tiles and the boards under the roofline. Easily fixed. Had to boil water for a couple of days but we had power!

Personally, I’m glad we didn’t stay even if the hurricane wasn’t right on my doorstep. Where I live was on the nasty side which means tornadoes! I’m afraid of those things.

All in all, we are fine. Back to school and trying to get caught up. Add in some fall cleaning and I’ve been so busy I’ve not had a chance to even play with my new sewing toys. I hope to fix that soon!

We finally got our internet back!

So, where have I been?

It all began with a complaint about sleeping much too often and a headache. Which led me to cardiologists, surgeons, gastroenterology, invasive tests, a bunch of new meds and so many doctor visits that I actually had to buy a day planner to keep them straight.

I gave up smoking, caffeine, started a different low fat, heart healthy diet that is so restrictive that I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. No salt, no pork, no…well, easier to say I eat chicken, lots of chicken. Lots of veggies too!!

Long story short, I’m not gonna die today. I’m learning to cope with problems they can’t fix. The hole in my heart is not getting bigger, even though my heart is enlarged it is not working too much harder at this point in time, I’m not shunting too much blood from right to left, or at least not enough where they are planning on doing anything about it. The smaller kidney is not blocked and is functioning, they are gonna watch the swelling on the aortic artery. Will continue on the blood thinners, the reflux meds, the anti seizure meds and a new set of sinus meds. No more anxiety meds….that’s scary!

I’m still sleeping a lot, still tired when I wake up, very forgetful, like a brain fog that won’t lift. The exercises to help with my breathing are working fairly well. I have to work on that some more. I don’t want to be on oxygen any time soon. I still have to have abdomen surgery but I’m waiting a bit as I want to heal a bit from all the other biopsies and test taking.

I’ve almost stopped panicking and thinking I’m having a heart attack every time I have some sort of chest pain or heart palpitations.

In other news, my oldest son was BACK in the hospital recently with a spider bite and another staph infection! He’s healing slowly, but well. They have no idea why he keeps getting staph infections over the smallest of cuts.

I bought a whole new curriculum that I’m pretty excited about. We plan on starting back on schooling after Labor Day. I’m so ready and so are they.

Y’all have no idea how much I missed all of you!!

It’s a rugged beauty I guess you’d say. Mostly because of the constant wind, the trees and landscape look stunted in ways and scrubby in others.

The Bayou near my home

Spanish Moss covered trees

A lovely, if not tiny, beach. It’s about 5 mins from my house. We spend a lot of time here in the summer. Most days it’s not crowded in the least.

Sailboat watching is a favorite past time

As is gull watching

Though my backyard ain’t too shabby either

Those trees were sheared off when Katrina came through. The scars are still so visible it’s unreal. Later on in the summer the ivy and other vines cover it and soften the view. But I kinda like the rough look of them. Reminds me how lucky I am to even be here, scrubby or not.

So what has me so excited?

Shangri-la by 3 sisters for Moda fabric! I ordered charm packs, binding and yardage a while back but kinda forgot I did lol (that’s the sign of a true addiction!) It came a few days ago but I delayed opening it because I wasn’t ready to use it. I didn’t want hands all over it. Except I’ve been petting it since I pulled it out of the package. Man, it’s so pretty!

PLUS, the place I ordered from, Be Sew Happy, was wonderful! Quick shipping, extra nice service. Def going to be visiting there again. If you click the store name you can see the fabrics until I get pics up.

I loved it so much I scrapped the doll quilts I had nearly finished and started 2 more with these instead. I’ll share those pics as soon as my partners get their quilts. Don’t want to spoil their surprise.

Now I’m thinking I need a jelly roll of these fabrics for ME a lap quilt!

Man, where did the time go today? It feels like I only got up a bit ago and it’s way past my bedtime.

We did a ton of yard work this morning and I’m all stopped up from pollen. It was so worth it! We saw our Hawks are back!

They are usually out in the early mornings sitting on my fence. I spend a bit of time with them while I have my coffee on my deck. I’m awfully grateful they have chosen my little speck of jungle to hang out in. They keep the rodents and snakes at bay. I’d give anything to see their nest. But that would mean actually going out there where rodents and snakes hang out lol

Dh was like a kid on Christmas this evening. He went to Lowe’s to buy parts for the broken weed eater and started gushing about a bbq grill. Seeing as how he so rarely spends money on himself I pushed him a bit to get what he wanted. He wasted all of 3 seconds saying yes.

He then went to the grocery store and bought steaks, salmon, chicken (to make my favorite meal ever) hot dogs, hamburger meat, buns, SQUASH! and other lovely veggies. He even bought attachments to use. Dinner wasn’t ready until 11 pm (we had other things earlier but I was waiting on the chicken) but man was it worth waiting for!

The best thing about this? I won’t have to cook lunch or supper for 2 days! Picture it, enough food for 8 people (9 tomorrow counting Jennifer) for 3 days (counting tonight) straight. That’s a lot of food! You couldn’t even see my kitchen floor for the bags when they brought the groceries in.

I’m just happy he’s happy. He’s been under a ton of stress and it was fun to see him relax a bit.

Oh and like the sweet man he is, he brought me spackle cause he knew I was nearly finished with the inside of my doll house and the outside work can start. He’s a pretty cool dude!

I think tomorrow I’ll make him an organizer for his car. He needs one badly, along with a trash bag.

Enough rambling. I need to get tired so I can sleep. Guess I’ll go clean the tub.

I’m so excited. We’ve had blooms for a few weeks now and I was sure the cold snap we had was going to kill what had already sprouted. They are still here!

My Wisteria started blooming yesterday! Dh cut the grass this past weekend! A sure sign that grilling out aint far behind!

I can’t wait to go dig in my garden! I’ve got maters and peppers. Anything y’all think of I could plant in containers? Must be willing to live through the 7th level of hell kinda hot. If ya know of something that might grow well, tell me please!

Anyone else glue their hair to things as they make them?

I’ve been working on this doll house for weeks now and I’m loving it. Though it’s like 2 steps forward and 4 backwards because I’m so clumsy lol

Oh and not to mention the blood I keep spilling because I’m a ding dong with a dremel and knife. Dh calls me often just to ask if I’m still alive rofl. Goofy man!

I’ve been on a documentary kick big time lately. Thank goodness you can watch them online at netflix. Some I’ve really enjoyed are:

The Business of Being Born, Ricki Lake not only stars in it (a lot of her!) she produced it. I really liked it. Not one to watch around the kids if you don’t want them to see birthing nudity as it deals with homebirths and most show complete nudity. It raised a lot of good points and had some numbers that frankly surprised me, even though I’ve done some reading and studying up on the issue. Def one to share with others.

Born into Brothels. Wow, it was pretty sad throughout the whole thing but captivating at the same time. I was flabbergasted at how they lived and by how it was impacting the children. They all seemed to hate it but it was all they knew. Didn’t deal with the brothel part in so much as it was no huge nudity or sex thing. It was more in direct and about the kids. I’d watch it again.

The most recent one I watched was MORE than boring. I didn’t even watch the whole thing. Wisconsin Death Trip seemed, from the story line, to be pretty interesting. About a town where everyone goes nuts. I liked the old pictures and some of the stories but it skipped around a lot and had actors reenact some of them…badly. It’s not something I’d ever sit through again so I’ll def say pass it on by.

I plan to watch more while dh is gone. I’m loving the instant viewing!

D brought home 4 computers and 2 laptops from his work. They are old, they are big, but they were free!

That brings the grand total of computers in my house to 7 pcs and 5 laptops. I now can have everyone doing school work for the full amount of time every day. Playing shuffle the kids was getting old!

When I told my friend about this she said we had way too many and I needed to donate them to a needy family or something. Don’t she realize we are the needy and poor family? haha