Difficult

Small project Sunday was interesting. I completely constructed the thin borders for my Jacqueline wrong so last night was spent ripping them out and today I'll have to reconstruct them. Paper pieces were taken out for the checkered border and with two of us, took nearly a half of a movie to remove all of it. Thank you Jim for assisting in this tedious process!

The giant rail fence is quilted and today I shall attach the binding for the customer. Hopefully. 

The very large border

It looks like our quarantine may be extended??? I feel bad for the folks who don't have hobbies or a passion. To me, it's just another day, or even a week(s). Except for the weekends, and an occasional customer dropping by, I don't generally go many places or see many people. I guess I love quilting too much to be in everybody else's business or to have to go somewhere to entertain myself. 

And I'm so grateful I do. 

With the assistance of YouTube, the internet, the blogs, and the web sites, I have plenty of interaction with the world. Or at least enough for me anyway. I hope you find your passion some day to be in the same position of contentment I've managed to find. 

Web Site

Building a web site even with something easy like Wix takes a LOT of time. An hour each morning and evening is getting me going, but wow! The time investment is HUGE!

My new DIL created a logo for me and while I like it, and it works fine, it's just not quite right yet. After pondering for a few weeks about this situation, I finally drew this up and, quite frankly, LOVE IT!

What do you think?

I think the wording needs to be a bit bigger. No?

Meanwhile, I continue to long arm during the in-between times.

Taking Advantage

Since we are "quarantined" to our homes, the work element in here is pretty high. Lots of hours yesterday doing a variety of things here in the studio. Working on my ever developing web site was first since I like getting administrative issues out of the way in the morning.

Then, these were sewn together.

Border sections for my current Jacqueline de Jong

These were the 584 squares I mentioned yesterday. After getting these together, I started another customer quilt.

Jill's giant rail fence

Why is that pic upside down? Here's a better one.

Jill's rail fence corner block

After long arming for about six or seven hours, I then turned a corner into something different. Our month is winding down and I hadn't yet started my small wall hanging for the month of April. Fabrics are pulled and the designs are on fusible. I'll continue with it later tonight.

I'm supposed to have a new customer coming this morning, but I'm not sure if the weather will cooperate. She doesn't want to come into our home since we are to maintain "social distancing" with this virus situation so we are hoping to do the planning on the back deck. There's more than one way to work through obstructions I always say and this is the solution we came up with. Yeah!

584 Little Blocks

The next phase of my Jacqueline de Jong is a checkered border surrounding all the rainbow curved sections. The colors are gradient and have to be meticulously pieced. She provided paper pieced templates to do the piecing with and I chose to stick with those.

10 hours later and are all together. They still need to be trimmed, paper removed and then put together in rows, but the paper piecing is the hardest part with the long, skinny papers needed to assemble them into something useful.

Here's all the trimmings.

Trimmings from the checkered border in my JD piece

 Kind of pretty!

I have some errands to do today (despite the "lock down" we're supposed to adhere to). But I need to get some things done and mom needs help with moving chores. I'm afraid there won't be much sewing done in the studio today.

Lock Down

Our governor closed our doors yesterday until April 13. Non-essential businesses are ordered to close. All travel is ceased unless you are an essential employee to an essential business. So glad I work from home.

Jim has to work since he is considered an essential business, but he'd prefer to be working.

This is what I accomplished yesterday.

Jills Shadow Box Quilt

Jill wanted me to bind this for her too and the reason for it being completed. I can't call any of these people to come get their quilts because I'm a non-essential business. But I'm getting a lot done for them so when I can let them in the house, they'll be all ready to go.

But my Jacqueline de Jong pieces blew up all over the studio after working on Jill's quilt. Today needs to be spent getting these out of the way to make room to work on other pieces without having 2" squares flying everywhere.

I'm going to take advantage of the lock-in and work diligently in here for the next three weeks. This way I'll be ready when I need to go outside and start working on the yard/flowers without feeling guilty about customer quilts being neglected. I've chosen to look at this in a positive light rather than complaining about it. It's a stay-cation!

New Web Site

I've kicked Wordpress out of my life. After struggling with that site for a year, I couldn't take it anymore. I tried feverishly to get my site running through them and frankly, was more confused the longer I worked with it.

Bummer though...they are holding my URL hostage and won't release it. I had to rename my web site and do some damage control of the weekend's work with WIX, but I think the site is "roughed in" enough to at least provide a little information.

The new web site is now called (drum roll please)...

I LOVE QUILTING AT THE LAKE, or ilovequiltingatthelake.com

I'm not changing my business name, just the physical URL to get to my information out there for potential/current customers.

Now that I've wasted a portion of my morning dealing with that, I can start doing some actual work in here. I'll be loading Jill's first quilt this morning and get it started. I have a Sugaridoo row to make. Some Jacqueline de Jong strips to start (there are lots of those to work on) and then who knows where the day will take me.

Catmosphere is complete and Hannah will be the recipient for her birthday in May.

For Hannah's birthday in May

Time to quilt!

Moving

No, I'm not moving. Heavens no! I love our house. Love, love, love it!

But my web site is moving. Currently hosted through Wordpress, I'm moving it to Wix today. Wordpress was too difficult for me to navigate and was struggling to identify blog versus web...and seemed to always post on the wrong thing. Of course.

My needle was moved on the long arm. When it came back from the shop it was set at about 6:31. I moved it back to about 6:25 and no more skipping. Weird. So my quilt currently on the frame to test why it was skipping should be finished today.

Catmosphere

And my mom IS actually moving. I was supposed to head over today to help pack books, but she is getting snow and we're getting some kind of sleet/snow/rain mix here. Therefore, giving me permission to work on the web site today. And one of my quilts.

House Bound

Even if this blown-out-of-proportion Corona Virus thing wasn't asking us to stay in, I probably wouldn't be out much anyway. Seems the grandkids down in Lansing like to share. Grandpa came home with it a day or so after spending time with them, and then a few days later, I started feeling poopy. I've been lying pretty low since Sunday.

I'm better now! Yeah!!!!

So, now to get caught up on quilt tops from customers. This is loaded this morning

Micky's Brick Road top

DW, as you may remember, had a few days at the long arm spa. He's acting a little better. But I think I've changed so many variables in him that I'm having a hard time getting him back to how I expect him to behave. Yesterday I took him on a quick run through another small customer quilt and we continued having some skipped stitches, shredded thread, etc.

With this top, I'm going to put everything back to how I had it before when diagnosing his problems pre-spa trip. We'll see how he stitches out then.

Progressing Along

Here's the Jacqueline de Jong after last night and this morning.

Crawling Along

Like I mentioned previously, this is not a quilt-in-a-day kinda project. Once DW returns tomorrow (hopefully) I'll have less time to work on this because I'm getting behind on customer quilts. Thankfully, my last day at my "real" job is in one week, which should provide ample enough time to get them caught up.

Piecing Today

I'll be paper piecing today. No word on the long arm yet and I don't really expect one until later today. This gives me time to work on my Jacqueline de Jonge I've put away for a while now. Here's where I am currently.

Chipping away at it

A Jacqueline de Jonge isn't a quilt you pump out in a few days. Her patterns are intense. It's like the Mt. Everest of quilting. Once you've tackled one of hers, or a Judy Neimeyer pattern, you can pretty much do anything in the quilting world.

And the geese are coming back. As I'm writing my blog this morning there is honking galore out on the nearly open lake. Spring is here I think.

Give Away

This quilt will be traveling all the way to Washington state to be donated to a kiddo who has a parent currently over seas. Caleb will receive it and disperse it accordingly. But this was our PQ challenge for the last week. Make something and give it away.

PQ Challenge Give Away

I finished and captured the pic on Friday. Did I remember to post it? Nope. Nice weather and yard work beckoned as did some major spring cleaning and household rearranging. I remembered Sunday at around 2:30.

But at least I'm doing something good and I hope the recipient appreciates the warmth and hug of love it will give.

Spa Day

Or more like probably a week instead of just a day. Not for me though. It's for the long arm. DW is WAY overdue for a PM. He should have went down in September and I've put it off. Now the machine is misbehaving and he needs to go see Mike.

Mike is an amazing Handi Quilter tech located at Gall Sewing in Lansing. Mike knows this machine intimately and will get it purring like he was previously. It looks like it's a timing issue and that's okay. It's better than an encoder issue (which I originally thought it might be).

This means no long arming for a few days.

Skipped stitches

An even bigger skip

And this is when you know you're machine isn't feeling its best and should probably go see your tech if you've ruled out just about everything else.

Triple Play

This is kind of the quilt I'm working on three of. What?

Luann dropped off three of these pretty similar quilt tops Sunday. I've got two done and today will work the third.

Number 3

These are a Missouri Star Quilt Company patterns in case you're wondering. Each top is being quilted differently and NOT edge-to-edge.

I received what I thought was a robocall last night/this morning (2:38). I didn't pay it much attention because it was already a rough hot flash kinda night. Upon awaking this morning, found out it was our local hospital with reports that mom was taken in again, by ambulance, for chest pains. Again.

Jim took her home around 5:30 this morning and she has multiple appointments today and the rest of the week to try to get some of this straightened out. The physicians feel it was the new meds they put her on Saturday and have altered them accordingly. She doesn't want me to cart her around (mom is very independent) and be a burden. She insists doing this herself. I'll let her for a while. A very little while.

I've also finished my PQ top. Maybe today I can slip it in between customer tops and get it quickly quilted. I was planning on doing some custom work in it, but it's a charity quilt and the kiddo who receives it won't know the difference.

PQ Give Away Challenge

When it Rains, Splash in the Puddles

Three customer visits yesterday, and one the day before. Glory, glory!!

Sunday was a drop off of three tops. Yesterday was a drop off of one top, pick up of one quilt/drop off two more tops, and then the final was another pick up of one quilt.

Then, last night, I received a call for another drop off on Friday.

I gave my two-week notice at the store this morning.

I'm at the age where I don't really want to work a full-time and a part-time job both. And, mom isn't getting any younger and I'd like to spend more time with her. And, and, and...

She met me after work this afternoon to go look at a condo in Gladwin proper. We both fell in love. It's kind of rough around the edges, and has been neglected somewhat. The place screams 1995 (when it was originally built), but with some elbow grease, some paint, and moms wonderful decorating touches, it won't take much to make it beautiful. She put an offer in on the spot.

Now, we wait.

Meanwhile, I'll be trying to work my PQ challenge and all these customer orders while trying to get through the two more days I have to work yet this week. And three more the next I believe.

March is Here. Spring is Here.

Or is it? While we have beautiful weather predicted for the next few days, I'm not going to count on it lasting too awful long. It is only the first week of March. But I'll hear all about it at the store tomorrow from customers I'm sure; "Looks like spring is finally here." "I'm so ready for winter to be over." "Oh what a lovely day and soon the flowers will be blooming."

Despite being at the hospital with my mom nearly all weekend (Friday and Saturday anyway), and after cleaning the house top to bottom yesterday (see, nice weather promotes spring cleaning) I did manage to get my PQ challenge figured out, pulled fabrics, cut fabrics, and started piecing.

PQ Challenge started

Once this is completed, I'm going to send this out to Caleb in Washington to have him give to one of his soldier friends for one of their kids. They are being deployed next month to help deal with the Corona Virus and it would be nice to have a hug of love surrounding them while mom/dad are away.

I did also manage to get the Buddy Bear Quilt done after flitting in and out of the house. I can't just spend a day at the hospital and not come home and sew.

Love the back almost as much as the front

I used a green Minky on the back and the quilting always shows up so nice back there. This is for our fifth grandchild due about a month from now.

Haven't did a Hazel update in a while. She was glad we were back home yesterday and celebrated by chasing a few of the neighbors' cars. Needless to say, she just bought herself some invisible fence this spring.

I'm so damn cute.