Little Machine/Little Quilts

Last week I made the dumbest mistake ever with my longarm. I was cleaning and oiling the machine and managed to get the t-shirt I use to collect oil drips sucked up into the hook while the machine was running. 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ A fuse was blown, which I was able to change, and I also knocked the timing out. Luckily, I guess, my machine has a toothed timing belt that you can adjust prior to having to do a full re-time. Not so luckily, it was a day my husband was at work and I could only move the belt one tooth, which wasn't enough. So no work for me that day. Unbeknownst to me, robotics practice was scheduled at someone else's house for that evening instead of at our house. So I had to wait more. He was able to move the belt two more teeth at nine o'clock that night and also made another minor adjustment to get everything back into place.

Thursday I was back at it, working on Jess's quilt. She gave me a large piece of plaid fleece for the quilt backing. I decided to try to line up the plaid. Not too bad!
               


I quilted it with loopy meander.

Then I quilted Toni's quilt with Julie's Chicken Wire. I have spent a small fortune on chicken wire-style designs. This one didn't import into my Intelliquilter correctly, but I was able to smooth the design and then use it. It's definitely the best of the chicken wires. I only had to do minimal tweaking to get things lined up correctly.

Next I worked on Margaret's quilt. She selected Freehand Hearts & Loops (a panto) for her quilt. The hearts mimic the hearts in her border fabric, but the quilting is really hard to see in general.

Then I quilted Trish's quilt with Maureen's Oakleaf. It matched her fabric so well! She wanted a gold thread to blend between the colors. I picked Glide Sand and it looks really nice. 

Meanwhile, I've been working on a test quilt, Starlight, for Lindsey at Yellow Umbrella Quilts. She has already released the pattern, so I can now share it. I chose to make the baby-sized version with fabrics from the Eat Your Veggies fabric line that I had in my stash. I quilted it with Rhapsody Dino Tracks and a very pale green (Pale Mist) thread. I will probably fully machine bind this due to time constraints. Sorry for the cruddy pictures. It got dark really early last night. I finished quilting it just before five and it was too dark for photos. 
I pieced the back too. I think this is such a cute fabric line. It seems to be mostly sold out, but you can find some in Etsy shops.
I saw that Quilts for Kids is in need of boy quilts. I have several I've been saving up--I like to ship many at once, but only one of the completed ones is a boy quilt, so I went shopping in my stash to see what I could pull together. I pulled fabrics for two and have one complete minus binding. My son told me that it looks like an old person quilt. I have to say, I kind of agree. LOL. Maybe there's a little kid out there with sophisticated taste. 😏

I quilted it with Coquina.


I haven't started cutting the second one yet, but I'll work on that and the binding of the other today. 

I have one more customer quilt to complete for this year that I'll work on this week as well. I have a few others in the house already, waiting for next year. I may work at a very leisurely pace on a few of those during my "vacation" because I have spent a lot of money in the past two weeks and would like to recoup some of that. Meet my most recent acquisition, a Bernina 350 SE Cotton + Steel edition from 2017.

I bought this from someone my husband works with that I also know through quilting. I did not need another machine, but the 350 weighs a lot less than my travel machine, a Bernina 430, and that made it very appealing. I need to get the 430 serviced and I have no idea how long that will take. I also need to get my regular machine, a 440QE, serviced again. The presser foot pressure isn't functioning correctly, but it's functioning better than the 430, which has a few broken parts and definitely doesn't seem to have been serviced as recently as the seller claimed.

Outdoors, the second garage door and tracks for both doors arrived and the installers came Monday and Tuesday. I looked out briefly Monday afternoon and grabbed a picture. I have no idea if the job is fully completed now, but I'm sure they'll be hounding us for the remainder of the bill shortly. Those things are like gold. I found the total shocking.
Anyway, I have quite a few sewing projects to complete or catch up on. I have my OMG, the Grassy Creek string border pieces, to do. The next Meadow Mist mystery clue comes out tomorrow. I need to bind the sweatshirt jacket for my daughter. Someone requested a doll bed sheet tutorial, so I need to look at that, I suppose. I need to finish up the Quilts for Kids things. I have one project to make for a gift. I want to make my darn dress form, which is a selfish thing just for me. The first robotics competition is a week from Saturday and "we" are entering crisis/panic mode. And all the deep cleaning of the house needs to be done. I need to work on my business website and watch more IQ classes. I have a to-do list that is a mile long. I think I need to accept the fact that I am one person and cannot do it all. But a girl can dream. And clean her house. :)



December One Monthly Goal

 We've made it to December!

New to One Monthly Goal?  Welcome!  To join, share a photo of your project plus some words about what you want to accomplish in a blog post or Instagram post and add that photo to the link up.  Return at the end of the month and share your results.  (Results link up opens for the last 7 days of the month.)

I have several projects I'd like to move forward this month. I really want to work on my dress form. I need to make and attach bias binding to a quilted sweatshirt jacket. I need to sew together all the Log Cabin Star blocks from last month. And everyone knows I have a very lengthy UFO list besides these few projects.

The project I am most motivated to work on this month is my Grassy Creek border pieces. I'm about halfway so far--all of the bigger ones that lean one way are done. My goal will be to finish all of the opposite leaning units plus the corner units. If I can get all the border pieces done, then maybe I can also get them assembled and onto the quilt, get the top quilted and bound, and then enter it in the IHQS at the end of February. 

Now it's your turn to set a goal. 

The One Monthly Goal accomplishment link up will be available on December 25.  Make sure you add a link to this OMG post so others can find the OMG link up from your blog--just paste this link into your post:  

Stories from the Sewing Room One Monthly Goal December Link Up

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