Showing posts with label juki long arm. Show all posts

Morewood Mystery & Lots of Changes

Have you ever sewn a mystery quilt?  I've done several and my next one will be the Morewood Mystery Quilt.  It starts next week with fabric selection and then runs through April 2021.  This is the sixth annual, free quilt along hosted by Cheryl Brickey of Meadow Mist Designs.  Instructions are posted to the Meadow Mist Designs blog on the first Thursday of each month with a reveal parade with over $1,000 worth of prizes in the spring.  There is an active Facebook group to quilt along with and even a sneak peek option for those who would rather the design not be a mystery (umm...that would be me this time!). Visit the Morewood Mystery page for more information about the quilt along, schedule, sponsors and prizes, Facebook group, and sneak peek option.


 Also...I am sponsoring one of the prizes--a voucher to use toward long arm quilting done by me!  

 Speaking of quilting, my 18" throat Juki long arm is for sale.  My asking price is $6250 and we will deliver within 100 miles of Bloomington, Indiana. Shipping is a possibility as well; the buyer would be responsible for all shipping charges. Not gonna lie, that would be a pretty expensive option. I do have the original machine head box.  It is a fantastic machine for hand-guided quilting and has rear handlebars for pantographs and also a ruler base.  It is in excellent condition, has been well-maintained, and has no issues. The frame can be set up as 5, 7, 10, or 12 feet.  Lots of extras included, some are pictured. Total retail value of everything is $12,000. Send me a message if you are interested, or pass along the info if you know anyone who may be interested. All sales final.






 In other news, look what came yesterday!  I am upgrading my business equipment by moving to a 26" throat machine.  It is torture not being able to set up the new machine!  😅

I have also updated my quilting business website. It's a work in progress, but I'd love to have you take a look.  www.quiltingbyanne-marie.com  All feedback welcomed.  You may notice I've updated my logos as well.

 Besides building a new website, I've been busy painting in the basement.  That's not very exciting to look at though. ha.

 I did squeeze in a bit of sewing time and made more progress on my For the love of geese quilt.  I have six more days to try to reach my One Monthly Goal of finishing the current green ring and also sewing the center parts.  I'm not sure I'll make it this month; I have a ton of customer quilts to work on. I'm very thankful for all the work and totally willing to sacrifice my OMG for work.  😄
I was really near the end of my cone of Aurifil the other day and it came off the cone like this. I've never had that happen before.  I was able to use part of it before it became a knotted nest.  My Bernina handled it like a champ with no change in tension.  But I found it really strange!

Finally, a mom brag...my daughter was awarded a $1000 scholarship from NF Midwest this week.  We all are thrilled.  Find out more about NF here.

 Linking with For the love of geese and My Quilt Infatuation.
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Mostly Gardening

Not a lot of sewing has been going on here.  We now have four windows replaced.  When the last two were removed, there was a small amount of water damage to address.  I suppose it could have been a lot worse. The big chore for me was dividing all the irises that formerly occupied the garden under three of the four replaced windows. Luckily my husband pulled all the plants out and my kids helped me to separate and bag all the irises. I think there were well over 300 rhizomes by the end. I gave some to some of my quilting friends and we put the rest at the end of the driveway with a "free" sign. It took a while, but we did end up giving away every single one.

I replaced some of the irises with new plants. I would like to add in a bunch of spring bulbs, but of course that needs to wait until fall. Plus, my husband will be digging through that garden again in the not too distant future, so I went really light on the replacement plants and completely avoided that area. Oh, and I have more plants in my front gardens to divide, so some of those will help fill in as well.
One day last week was super windy. We went outside and found that one of the trellises had flipped right over on top of my little tree. I did not know that those green garden stakes could bend at a 45 degree angle like that. My little tree is still a bit worse for wear.  Fingers crossed that it has a full recovery.
Our veggie garden is going strong--at least in the greenery department. The lettuce is just about done. The peas are ready for harvesting right now. The beans are getting blossoms.  I think I saw a blossom on the tomato. The peppers are finally starting to grow.  The few beets that came up have put on a lot of greenery. The cucumbers are finally starting to grow--the first few didn't make it and we had to re-sow. I have two dill plants starting.  None of the chives came up. Our surprise sunflower is setting a blossom.
Here is a view of my front yard. My lower garden looks really lush. In reality, it really needs to be weeded, the spearmint is still out of control, and there is a ton of milkweed.  And still very few butterflies to be seen.
I went to the dentist last week. I was glad to see that the flowers at a house along my route were still blooming. This place is simply stunning every single year. I figured I had missed their display what with staying home all spring, so I really appreciated seeing it.
A quick check of the nesting box yesterday showed three of four baby house wrens. This morning they were all gone.
I finished a few more units on the For the love of geese quilt. I need to get a move on--this ring and the inner portion are my June OMG and time's almost up.
I also quilted a king size quilt made by Amber.  
We've removed the robotics from my Juki and I quilted Amber's quilt free hand yesterday.  I had forgotten how wonderful the Juki on its own (minus the robotics equipment) is. It was so light and responsive. I guided the quilting with just one hand.  :)  

My Juki is still for sale. It is a fantastic FMQ machine with a beautiful stitch.  

Meanwhile, my new, bigger machine has made its way from Iowa to Indianapolis over the last week. And I get to wait another week before the delivery company can bring it.  

Google has made more changes to the Blogger platform. I still do not like it. My font does not display properly. The labels part is finicky.  Also, I HATE the way the photo upload is currently working. I can do one at a time or place all photos in at once, only I cannot change the order of the pictures with that option. Also, I seem to not be able to view the HTML anymore. Viewing and editing the HTML is necessary for photo quality, amongst other things. UGH.  #fixblogger

Speaking of Google, I did an image search for a pantograph yesterday and every so often a picture from my blog was interspersed. How weird is that? This screen shot shows the first few results. My son's frog mini is in the bottom center. As I scrolled, more and more of my photos came up, and they were not related to my search. SO. WEIRD.




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NASA quilt

I've managed to get most of a quilt done in the last week.  I started piecing it on August 27 and attached the binding to the front yesterday.  I mentioned last week that the top was a Riley Blake kit that we switched fabrics on.  My son chose the fabric arrangement and I think he did a great job!  I like his version a lot better than the original.
For the backing, we purchased another panel in the same line of fabric and used one of the fabrics in the kit plus some additional to make the backing large enough. I pre-washed the fabrics and they had a good bit of shrinkage.  Maybe as a result, I had a hard time getting the backing to lie flat, so I had to rip the top and bottom seams, re-square everything, and reattach them.  It still wasn't great, but it mostly worked out.  No tucks or folds, so we'll call it a win.

 I may have mentioned before that it is really, really hard to get a pieced backing to be exactly even and centered during the long arm process.  I thought I had this one fairly close, but it's far from perfect.  Good enough for who it's for.  😏
Overall, I'm pleased with how this one is coming out.  We chose the quilting design "Sweep" from Urban Elementz and I used a coordinating gray So Fine thread.
In other news, we have added a new-to-us 2010 Prius to our silver fleet (our other cars are silver too, and of a similar vintage).  The intention is to entice my daughter to finish her driver's training hours and get her license before she starts college, at which point she will be able to have this as her commuter car.  She's not exactly happy that her dad will probably be driving this to and from work in the meantime. He tells me it's not good to leave hybrids sitting undriven, something to do with the battery.  I'll take his word on that since he's the car guy.  I guess she just needs to get motivated and finish the hours.

Speaking of cars, we went to the local car show on Labor Day and I finally got a picture of this Mystery Machine.  We used to see it parked in our community all the time, but we were never able to get a good photo.  We finally saw it again, and up close.  They really have a theme going on.  
I started reading the John Urschel book.  I'm not that far in, but it's good so far.  

 We weeded one of the flower beds.  We need to finish harvesting beets and potatoes and replant peas and lettuce soon.

 Come back and visit Friday for another edition of Funny Things.

 Linking with For the love of geese and My Quilt Infatuation.

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On My Table

I've been pretty busy this past week.  While I haven't made much progress on the technical side of things, I have actually done some quilting and sewing.  And it feels good.

 I made a Kristine ID wallet (pattern by Uniquely Michelle) for my daughter.  She chose the fabrics.  
I was happy to have this coordinating zipper laying around.  I didn't even
feel bad when I threw away most of it after cutting it down to the right size.
I didn't do so well with fabric placement here!  LOL
I made one of these for myself a few years ago.  Read all about it here!

 I quilted another charity quilt for my guild.  The fabrics in the quilt are by Sweetwater for Moda.  I chose to use the Starry pantograph to quilt it.  And I have happily passed it off to another guild member for binding.
I'm working on a secret project.  Here's a weird, grainy sneak peek.
I'm also hoping to get to my son's NASA quilt this week.
I've mentioned in passing that I'm working on taking photos of my quilts.  I'm still struggling to find the perfect lighting and styling.  I thought it would help if I had a quilt ladder.  I beseeched my husband to make one over the weekend.  I chose mahogany because Menards does not stock walnut.  Here are a few photos of it.  
Determining layout.

I really was hoping to do a finished quilt picture of this quilt for this week. And wouldn't you know it, we've had overcast, rainy weather the last few days.  Not complaining though, because we desperately need the rain.  So, here's another little shot of it.
The coolapeno/jalapeño plant is still going strong in the garden.
We have started our sixth, and I think final, FLL season.  My kids are also taking an eight-week Intro to Fencing course.  Add in SAT prep, trig/pre-calc, just general schoolwork and activity stuff, etc., it's been busy.  I must comment here that although I have a degree in Mathematics and I used to teach math before children, I can't remember how to do most things past Algebra without looking them up.  😞  Oh, I'm also learning EQ8 and made a very basic quilt layout with imported fabrics yesterday.  Feeling accomplished!

 I am accepting bookings for quilting right now.  Turn around is under two weeks.  Book services and sign up for my monthly newsletter at www.quiltingbyanne-marie.com.

 Linking with For the love of geese.


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How to Use a Paper Pantograph

I thought I'd try something new--I made a video during the process of quilting the guild donation quilt I worked on last week.  I thought people might wonder how you would use a paper pantograph when quilting, so I made lots of small videos with my cell phone as I went along.  This is my first time talking in a video, my first time using iMovie (had to get my tweenage son to help me), my first time trying to join multiple videos into one, just lots of firsts.

 The movie ended up much longer than I expected; it's 13-1/2 minutes!  I removed as much unnecessary content as I could to try to shorten it.  Also, there are times when I forgot to aim the camera where I was looking or it didn't quite focus where I was aiming.   The transitions between the scenes are nonexistent. Hopefully the content is useful despite my inexperience.  And YouTube has chosen an odd frame to use as the preview here!
If you watched, what did you think? Could you understand what to do?  Please be gentle!

 As a side note, since adding the computer to my long arm, I hadn't quilted anything from the back until now. Tracing the panto by hand made me so thankful for the computer.  Not that there's anything wrong with doing it by hand, I did that for almost four years.  

 I've been busy working on the technical end of launching the quilting business, so I have not sewn at all since I did the guild quilt a week ago.  I've ordered business cards, am working on taking photos, and am still tweaking the website. I've ordered some new batting that I'm excited about.  I'm doing other business-y things too.  ha ha

If you'd like to see the website in progress, click here.  All of the information is there and services can be booked, but I haven't added photos yet.  Since you're reading here, you probably have already seen my photos anyway.  😏  Anyway, there is also a newsletter sign up there with a special code. I'm planning to do a once-a-month newsletter, so it won't clog up your inbox.

 My quilt guild is selling raffle tickets to win the library quilt. Much to my surprise, I've actually managed to sell a few tickets long distance via Facebook.  Thanks to my cousin and high school friend who bought some.  😊

Totally switching gears again, the summer garden is basically done.  We still have the cucumber and jalapeño plants.  The cucumber is slowing down but the jalapeño is going strong. We harvested the first batch of potatoes and beets.  Last year we harvested the beets and ate them boiled, because that is how my mom likes them and it was her birthday.  This year we tried roasting them, but I thought they tasted essentially the same as they did boiled--earthy and beet flavors.  At least they look pretty in the bowl. We have a few more to harvest and I think I may try making chips out of them unless someone can point me to an outstanding recipe.  At least the potatoes are good--we didn't get much yield from the first bag, but they taste really good.  And they didn't have scab like last year, so bonus.


And finally, a sneak peek of a project a long time in the making.


Have a great week!
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7.3.19

This past week has been a bit off.  We had unexpected schedule changes and sometimes the kids just need you more than usual.  

 I did manage to finish quilting the quilt that's been on the frame for several weeks.  I was trying out a new pattern on it and the computer program just didn't like it.  Not only was it super slow, it crashed continually and I had to keep reprogramming the pattern.  Thankfully I had thought to write down the settings so that it wasn't too bad to reprogram.  Each row took 30-40 minutes to stitch out and had over 12,000 stitches.  I lost track at the end of just how many rows I did, but I am confident in saying that it has over 180,000 stitches. Next up will be making and attaching the binding.
I have since learned that I could have tried a different file format to import the design and it would have then perhaps had a smaller file and wouldn't have been so prone to crashing the program.  While I generally prefer a tighter, smaller pattern, I think I should have gone much larger with this one.  I'll try again another day.

 I sewed four more book blocks while the long arm was stitching.
I finished painting the room we are working on.  Next up is to replace the windows.  The originals leaked at the corner seams and we got new ones under warranty.
I've mentioned before that we've had a very wet summer and how it seems to have affected things.  We've had very few butterflies--still no monarch sightings.  We have had a lot of birds stay longer than usual, especially the orioles.  The orioles do stay all summer, but don't usually come in to the feeders after a few weeks. We also have at least one pair of rose breasted grosbeak that have stayed--those generally come through in May and stay only a week or two.  We have very few goldfinches this year.  Those we generally have in abundance all year.  We have a much smaller amount of hummingbirds as well.  Anyway, the point of all this is that we are also seeing juveniles of many of the birds.  Some are easy to identify and some are a bit more challenging.

 I saw this group of orioles last week.  One of them was feeding jelly to the lighter one.
I also have been seeing this bird at the feeders often.  I'm fairly certain it is a juvenile red headed woodpecker.
 

 I'm really hoping to get in more sewing time this week.  If not, school starts in five more weeks... I'm planning to do the binding for the quilt shown above, piece two more charity quilts, make more book blocks, and just try to be more productive than I've been lately.  I'm drowning in fabrics that I really would like to use up.

 Also, I'm really not a fan of people shooting off fireworks at home, especially over a long period of time, like a week or more.  Some people, pets, and children do not handle the sounds well.  You think you're safe in your own home, asleep, and suddenly it sounds like you're under attack.  I'll be glad when this week is over.




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