I've reposted last week's to-do list below. I made some progress, but it didn't really feel like I did much. The things with strikeouts are completed. The things I made progress on I updated with the bold italic. The rest had zero progress.
- make 15 guild items (secret)
bind one client quilt- keep up with quilting workload
Kind of. I'm one behind where I'd hoped to be and have a ton of design work to do in order to make further progress.
- figure out what to do with sloper for class/
attend live class later today
I made slits in the back to see how much extra back room I require. I requested help. Apparently I haven't done some of the adjustments that they thought I should have prior to that. This needs much more time & attention. 😔
- tighten elastic in tiered gingham skirt & hand sew shut the weird waistband gaps
I fished out the elastic in preparation for tightening.
- make progress on Forever Neverland quilt
I have all the remaining pinwheel blocks (11) prepped and laid out, ready to sew.
- table runner?
- figure out fair entries prior to June 25
- make progress on race car quilt prior to OMG post on June 24
mend shortsfind & apply correct fertilizer in vegetable garden- weed all three flower gardens--my foot and the rainy weather are slowing me down
- figure out how and where to transplant things I want to keep from the upper garden to prepare for porch repair
Kind of. We decided we'd move things we want to keep over to the side of the barn. This isn't the ideal time of year for transplanting, but we don't really have much choice. No work has been completed yet.
- continue to work on business website issues
- make muslin of shorts pattern to see if they fit/if so, make some shorts (Why are all the shorts I see this year so short--like 3" inseams? I'm too old for that.)
- continue working on things needed to set up second longarm & iQ
This last one is where things really started going sideways. We had the frame all set up with the mods. The machine was on the frame and my husband was starting to pull out the iQ parts. I needed to remove the leaders that hold the backing in order to install my SewTites. I thought I may as well clean out the inside of the machine and the motor brush areas while I was at it. (These two areas should be cleaned on an annual basis on an APQS.) I noticed that the foot was really sloppy with lots of side to side motion. It kind of doglegged when moving the flywheel through a rotation. I contacted service, who called back right away. 😬 I had a brief scare when she couldn't locate the machine by serial number, but we figured it out.
The old parts for this are no longer available, which I figured. I knew they didn't sell the additional feet anymore (Hey, if you have an older APQS with the foot with two screws, I have feet for sale! I also have a partially used set of 108" zippers.). I have to install an upgrade to the current foot model, which requires tearing apart pretty much everything. The parts came yesterday, along with a 36-page instruction booklet. So. Things have been at a standstill while we wait on this.
I have made progress on installing the SewTites. This involves sewing a channel in the leaders, then inserting the metal bracket part of the SewTites into the channel. The first step is to remove the leader from the bar. I suppose if you were super awesome and confident, you could sew your parts while they were still on the machine, but I'm not cool like that. If you ever wondered what the bar looks like without the leader, here it is:
Once the leader is free, make a mark at the center edge if you don't already have one. I press up a 7/8" fold. 
Then I stitch along the loose edge, 1/16" from the edge. 
Next I sew right down the middle, perpendicular to the fold, and then slide in a metal bar all the way up against that seam. (You will work from the center out on each side.)
The bars are 4" long. I sew a seam 6" from the previous one. This allows for some flexibility of magnet placement to better fit each individual quilt. Don't forget to slide the bar all the way to the side, away from where you are sewing the next seam.
Slide in another metal bar, sew 6" away from last seam, and keep repeating. Once all of one side is done, go back and insert bars on the other side.
On my 12-ft Lucey, I have 20 bars in each leader and have left an opening at each end of the leader that I slide an extra bar into if needed. I did that because I didn't have quite enough room to clear the bar and sew a seam. So for this one you need two of the sets in the metal tin plus one extra pack of 5.
On my 10-ft Lucey, I have 18 bars in each leader and they go all the way to the end of each leader. That is two of the packs in the metal tin and you will have four spare sets. As a result of writing this post and counting the bars, I discovered that I sewed two bars into one spot on one of the 10 ft leaders. Oops. I'll need to pull out that extra bar. More work!
Once all the bars are sewn in, you just have to tape the leader back to the correct bar in the correct orientation. I could refer to my original machine for this, but if you were starting fresh, it would be very helpful to take pictures to help guide you. 
It is also helpful to have more than one person while taping the leader back on. We had a bit of a surprise while unrolling the quilt back leader. I turned the bar two turns and the entire leader fell off! The tape does eventually give way.
I did run in to another issue. The person I bought the machine from did not use the quilt top leader--she floated her quilts. I generally do not float my quilt tops. Anyway, she had painters tape wrapped around that leader and when I removed it, it left tons of goo in four 8" strips up the leaders. I'm trying to figure out how I want to address that. I think I'm going to have to remove that leader and cut off the goo, then treat the edge so it doesn't ravel. If you have a better idea, let me know!
I feel on the edge about pretty much everything. Yay. None of it is really that big of a deal, even though it feels like it, except maybe my foot because it's hard to get stuff done when it hurts to walk. The weeds are driving me crazy, because you know how hard it is to recover once they start taking over. The rest will work out eventually.
I did get a few quilts done. I had to make and apply bias binding to Sherri's quilt from last week. It had been years since I made any large amount of bias binding. Once I got it all made it went well.
I quilted Persian on Betty's quilt.
Trish picked Lovely Loops and we decided on Magic Mint for the thread on this one.
For Trish's other quilt, we used Amethyst thread and the Loops and Swirls design.
Moving back to my own quilting, amongst our other Saturday activities, we went to the history center's garage sale fundraiser. I couldn't resist this quilt top. It's quite large at 80" x 92". I paid $20 for it. I love the weird 80s/90s cow print. I'll have to find a reasonable backing and some binding and get it quilted. I may donate it to one of the big guild's programs. We'll see. 
Out in the garden, besides the flowers being overrun with weeds, the vegetables are struggling mightily. I have one tomato and a couple of peas. The asparagus looks as it should and everything else still looks terrible. Several of my green bean plants have disappeared. One surprise is that both my pear trees have a good amount of pears on them. The one has had like one pear ever and it had at least 11. The Bartlett pear has loads. I'm sure we'll end up with zero thanks to the critters.
My four chickens are doing okay. The baby bluebirds have left the nest. We still have a good number of orioles coming in for jelly. We finally have hummingbirds coming in regularly. They didn't seem to like the bee guards I'd used in the one feeder, so I removed them. Now that feeder has carpenter ants, of all things. That's a first for me.
My washing machine quit working again over the weekend when I had a major amount of laundry to do. My husband had neglected to order the repair part when it first started having issues, so he found one to order. I'd swear the price has increased quite a lot since we last looked at it a few months ago. Anyway, he started tearing apart the machine and unplugged it. The next day I was freaking out over not having a working washing machine. He told me I could plug it back in and try it, and to add two screws back into the control panel thing to hold it on. It worked and I did all the laundry. The new part got delivered yesterday. Guess what he found was one of the common causes of the control panel failure? Frequent power blips. Guess what we have?
With that, I need to get to work. Happy sewing!
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