Not Always As Planned

I had every intention of getting the body of the quilt on DW stitched out yesterday morning. I set up the area, parked in the motif, did some adjustments and pushed 'quilt'. It took some tack stitches and then started ghost stitching.

This was my morning. After restarting the Pro Stitcher a few times and fiddling with some settings within the program I was experiencing the same results. I called Handi Quilter. 

Apparently my very new tablet needed both a Microsoft update as well as a PS update. While that was working, customer number one showed up.

She left, I ate lunch and then at that point, received a phone call that customer number two was on her way from Midland. I didn't want to get into anything big, so I started plugging away at the crochet bag I started down in Shipshewana.

She finally arrived and stood and talked for a while. When she left I continued on with my crochet bag(s) project. I received a call about an hour later that a quilt I had been holding since July was finally being picked up. She arrived well past 4:00, but at least it finally found its home.

Here's the three bags I completed during the day.

Aren't these so stinkin' cute?

Since I hadn't long armed (at all) yesterday, I jumped on Foster to get my daily long arm fix in. After a pass I shut him down and moved over to working on Produce Section...

Orange you glad you're here?

These oranges turned out almost perfect. Elizabeth Hartman writes nearly perfect patterns. I have found a few minor things I'd like for her to do in her patterns that would benefit a beginner quilt maker, but I can figure things out with my years of experience.

Getting the tree today and running to Midland to do a little shopping. It's snowing pretty good out there, but Jim's driving and I won't worry about the nearly bald tires we have to replace on the truck as he's a professional. 

Independent

My mother is a very independent person. After her surgery Tuesday morning, she was pretty out of it. I spent Tuesday night and yesterday morning with her. After she felt a little better, she insisted I go home and get some work done. Jim stopped by after he got done with his work day, and again, she insisted she didn't need me to come back and spend the night "just in case". 

I have customers coming later this morning and let mom know if she needed anything (at all) I would be free after lunch. This was via text. Since sending the text last night all I've received back were crickets.

Hope she's okay. I'm going to try to call her here in a bit. 

Meanwhile, I spent most of yesterday (once I did get home) on Bernie working Elleens A to Z for Ewe and Me quilt. I'm about half-way complete on that one. Lots of cross hatching...

Every letter gets crosshatching in the background

Once I worked that for about seven hours, I shut Bernie down to prepare Bernadettes Dog Park quilt for quilting today.

Dog Park by Elizabeth Hartman

This top is so darn cute! Hazel's in the front. LOL! It's getting an E2E with dog houses and bones in it, but first I had to get the new tablet hooked up to the internet. I had to make a call to HQ and then had to reinstall the latest ProStitcher version since it wasn't recognizing the wifi. 

Once that was done, I needed to purchase the motif Bernadette wanted. Now I can set quilting parameters and get it started later this afternoon. I don't want the machine running when customers are here. It always has problems during their visit and then I become frustrated.

We were supposed to get snow last night, but the storm split and went totally around us. Oh...I didn't post this earlier in the week but we now have the final "big" section of the studio done...

The last big studio chore

So glad that's done. Devon (the company owner) is coming back out today or tomorrow to work on some house issues we're having, but the studio is now drip free. Yay!

New Tablet

UPS pulled up yesterday while I was out watering the Mum. Hmmm???? I wasn't expecting anything. 

Then I saw the label. Eureka! The new tablet arrived for DW. I mean, why did I need a new tablet? The other one was only 12 years old for heavens sake.

Getting ready for installation

What I thought would take Jim and I hours to get installed only took about 45 minutes. The front handle bars had to be removed as did the old tablet bracket and all the wiring. Initially I put the tablet in upside down and we had to refigure everything, but my amazing man helped me get it all to rights, and after taking a quick test drive, it seems to be working well.

Except, the new tablet is taking a LONG time to power up compared to the old one. I guess if I'm doing any Pro Stitcher work I'll need to get it going sooner than usual.

Janices quilt is done...

Love all the texture!

I'm headed up to Hale, Michigan this morning to give a brief presentation on the art quilts I make and to let them decide if they want to hire me next summer for a class. I'm okay either way of their decision. 

They offered to let me stay for lunch, but I need to get back here and work and start wrapping my head around retreats. I'm going to Shipshewana after all (yay) and was on the phone all morning with folks trying to get rooming/rides/dates squared away.

I'll be working on Kathi's second quilt today; Flower Felicity. When I started ditching in yesterday on DW I felt so at peace. Working on DW is like coming home. I checked his stitch count (in case it went away with the new computer) and I'm at 98+ million. Whew. That's a lot of thread!

How Is This Part of Quilting?

Thursday was spent with my mother and brother. I did get quite a few business phone calls while we were out and about, which lead to yesterday's frenzy. And lack of blogging.

Four customers in and out yesterday. Ann and Mary dropped off and picked up both. Onita dropped off. Linda picked up after I finished her quilt. In between customers I was able to get Lindas quilt finished (obviously since she picked it up last night)! And, I hit a milestone while doing it...

We actually got some sunshine to snap a pic

Look at the Lifetime Stitch Count

90 million!! My friend Nick, in Vancouver, BC has a billion, but I'm not far behind. He has a Fusion too so apparently they truly are work horses. 

What's going on here? How is this quilting related?

Thumb Drive?

Jason, from Gall Sewing and Vac, was one of the many phone calls I received Thursday and he indicated to me, that even though Bernie doesn't have the digital quilting system on him, he still has a computer interface. There is a Firmware update from Bernina I need to do and he thinks this will fix the small tension sensor problem. I'm going to try to tackle that today. 

I'm also removing Bernadettes quilt from Bernie and loading both the machines up as Jim is working today, and Mark is also here working on the drywall. It's like it's not even a Saturday but just a regular work day around the place. I think tomorrow may be a totally veg day since we've been running fast and hard the past week. 

Autumn is Starting to Show Just a Little Bit

As the calendar nears the end of July, and as our drought has brought on extreme stress to our lands, our trees are already showing the affects with a slight change in some of their leaves. It's too soon.

This was observed as we took a buggy ride and on our trip to Houghton Lake yesterday. It feels like we just jumped into spring and fall is right around the bend. Fall is my favorite season and with it comes less bugs. And more quilting time. Always two good things.

Despite being gone most of the last half of yesterday, I did get Paulettes quilt completed before we left. Would love to show you the detail but the Mac had an update yesterday and my phone, which I use to photograph everything, is having an off day apparently. 

Hazel and I snuggling on a particularly cold-dish night earlier this week

I made a decision last night after our return. My "Bag of Tricks" which I'm now going to call my Bag of Projects, was supposed to be gone through and weeded out. What I'm going to do instead is just pull the first project out (which I did) and that'll be the next project. It exposes the project after that which I can prepare for (fabric, supplies) while making the first project. 

Here's what I pulled last night...oh wait, phone/computer issues. Maybe tomorrow? Well, it's a little wall hanging I purchased from one of my customers a few weeks ago prior to her estate sale with little old ladies skirt bottoms, legs, and shoes. 

While waiting for the phone and computer to sync this morning, I pulled all the tops I have completed out and all the backings I've purchased thus far and paired up as many as I could. 19 tops total and pairs for 14 of them. This is called taking advantage of the slower month of August and knocking out as many of my own quilts as possible. 

Love em' or Hate em'

My main computer, which is a Mac desktop, is the computer I blog on, work on the web page, purchase items through my suppliers, and do administrative work through. It had a few days where we thought we lost it. 

I can't say enough good things about Mac Apple Care and their team. Within three hours last night we were able to revive the machine and I'm back to working on it now. BUT, this was after two days working on it with the boys and they had covered a lot of what we would have had to do last night through Apple Care, making the time with them less.

While most everything could have been done through my iPad, the extensive music library we have on this machine was in jeopardy. I do have an external back-up, but some of the music library is nearly 200 Christmas songs built over several years that are no longer even available through the usual music channels (Amazon, Pandora, iTunes, etc.). I was a little nervous!

On to actual quilting stuff. Because I was fiddling around with the Mac for two days, it took me that long to quilt Joan's guitar quilt shown previously. And, I had a bevy of customers coming and going to pick up and drop off both. As well as two visits from mom. 

I'm working Joan's second quilt this morning, and would love to show you, but the photos on the mac are still restoring and will have to wait to post them tomorrow.

I have been able to get a little Gravity work done (all while waiting for computer rebuilding steps to happen) and only have two sections to construct before it can start turning into a top.