Not All The Details

So I'll skim over last week about our retreat. I did complete a number of tops. The first was the Fireworks top...

Moving along, I completed the Scrappy Goodness top but neglected to capture a pic. Those were all done on day 1.

Day 2: I was piecing the sides of the cowboy boots when it was my time to get my pedicure. My feet were so happy!

After finishing the sides of the cowboy blocks...

I pieced this top together. This had been hanging out in my retreat tub for too long so it needed to be done...

I had also been holding onto two Rayola preschool quilts to make so I got those done on day three. I started on another project on day three but could not continue it as I need a full design wall to work with it. I started another project on day four but was cut short because we needed to start packing up. Here are a few pics of other projects other folks were working on...

Linda's beautiful wall hanging

Bernadette's Lori Holt Tulips

Nancy's One Block Wonder

Linda's One Block Wonder

Before I left the retreat I had one emergent top given to me, one to just ditch, and another Tilda Snowman pillow top to quilt. When I got home I had another two emergent requests come in and then a request for me to finish quilting my Tilda Make Do and Mend top for a Tilda event Bittersweet Quilt Shop is hosting in May. 

That means juggling some things around on two of the frames. The one I was going to start on Monday had to be taken off Marty and a new back is being frame ironed. My strip quilt was removed from DW so I could work on the Tilda top for Bittersweet. 

This was the first retreat Linda and I have hosted together and we started taking names of those who may be interested for another next year. Not only did EVERYBODY sign up that was in attendance (which is never heard of), but we had an additional three people who stopped by and sign up as well. We are cutting off the number of attendees at 35. We only have 13 openings left. 

When It's About The Piecing

If a busy quilt top is received into the queue and the customer wants custom work done on it, a look at what I have as a whole is necessary. The quilt I'm currently working is not about my quilting. At all! It's about the piecing. I have to decide how to enhance the customers piecing and not detract from it with the quilting. It's a balancing game. Here's an example...

See anything?

The top half of this block is quilted but can you see anything? No! And you shouldn't. Her appliqué work on this is stunning and I do not want to detract from her efforts. I'm just laying down thread to hold the piece together and not messing with her substantial accomplishments.

I've seen this quilt on-line and found that most long armers are merely doing an edge to edge on this particular pattern. Sadly. It detracts from the overall image(s) and bunches up some of those many layers this quilt has.

Because all of these pieces need to be started and stopped individually, this is taking a long time to quilt but so worth the work!

After working on this all day (and well past quitting time), I moved right over the DW to do my strip. I made a scrappy goodness block after that and then I was in the mood for some paper piecing. 

While I had zero intentions of working all of the third column in Rita, I was having such a good time that I did indeed get the third column completed and attached to columns one and two...

One more column to go

I love to paper piece and this has been fun. There are a lot of teeny, tiny pieces in here so as I'm building it I'm trying to work out how this is going to be quilted. I'm still unsure but it'll come to me when the time comes I'm sure. 

Today will be on Marty all day working on Bernadette's Hometown quilt. And, probably tomorrow as well since it's a slow-going process.

Freezing Fog

I love freezing fog. My brother used to be a pilot for ComAir and he said the worst flying conditions were freezing fog. But it's so pretty and we get to enjoy two days in a row of it here on the 'lake'. 

I have caught up with my 99 strips and made three Fireworks blocks yesterday. In between each of those, the quilt fairy gift prototype was worked through. Here's the result of my efforts...

Being 'used'

A large back pocket

Six front pockets

I sent the pics to Linda and she said they were cute. How long did it take me or how much fabric was necesssary? I sent her back all that information, but honestly, I could probably get one done in under an hour AFTER the background fabric was quilted and trimmed and it only takes scraps to make. 

Somewhere in my day, while Jim was down burning the Bellers' dead pile, I hung this up to add some color and life into the studio...

Jim put this together for me

This is now located between the two large windows facing the lake behind Marty. 

Since I only have a week left in building the Fireworks blocks, and the scrappy quilt is going to be another one of those block-or-two-a-night projects, I started prepping for this cute wall hanging that I think I picked up in Shipshewana...

Should go nicely with my needles wallhanging

I was disappointed in learning they only provided templates to make copies of instead of actually providing the FPP papers most patterns have. Thankfully, I have some newsprint I picked up at Arnies during their going-out-of-business sale and was able to get the copies done last night. 

This looks bigger in the picture than what it's actually going to finish given the tiny pieces needed for each foundation. I'm not using the mustard yellows in all of it. The fabrics I pulled are more yellow-yellow and creams working towards the dark with a bit of browns and oranges. But the seam rippers are all about the same colors.

A Little More Subdued

The star that I made yesterday (after having to remake a few of the parts) went together fairly easily. My colors are not as vibrant as the cover of the pattern, but am happy with the results...

Woven Ribbons by Judy Neimeyer

The rest of the afternoon was spent snuggling with the puppies and trying to stay warm. This frigid temp situation is taxing the house and our furnace, that's for sure. 

I'll be finishing the Flea Market wall hanging for Cindy S. this morning and then moving onto the quilt I'm frame ironing the backing for on Marty. 

For once, I'm working with the sun instead of against it. The sun bounces off the propane tank in the afternoon, which hinders my ability to see during the late afternoon. The sun is blazing through the windows on the east side of the house in the morning, which hinders my vision in the morning on Marty. 

Personal Time

At one point a person needs to take time out for oneself. Yesterday was spent working on DW the entire day and then after doing long arming I moved over to work on two Fireworks blocks. I didn't know if I'd feel like doing anything out in the studio today. 

After those two blocks were pieced and trimmed I wanted to start something new. The Fireworks blocks are a once-a-day thing, and the AQS state blocks are a once-a-week kind of thing. I didn't want to start something huge so found this in my stash from Shipshewana...

I have enough batiks to work this so started right in. 

My latest little project

The thing that intrigued me about this pattern wasn't so much the quilt design, but rather the quilting that was in the design itself. Had I not seen it completed in the quilt shop in Indiana, I may not have even given it a second glance. It's a Judy Niemeyer, and while I love doing her patterns, sometimes the directions are a bit muddy. 

Thankfully, I'm not a beginning paper piecer because this set of directions, were again, a little muddy to understand. Today I'm hoping to work on some more of this. We're getting a late start today. I could NOT get to sleep last night despite having the busy day that I had; I remember seeing 3:54 a.m. on the clock. Meaning, I slept in.

Two More

I completed two more blocks in Fireworks yesterday morning before having to start lunch. Jim had to repair the snowblower since one of the pins sheared off and only half the auger was doing anything.

Going to be pretty

The kids should be home from the hospital/clinic this morning with baby Evie and Jim and I were reminiscing about how, when we brought Andrew home it was so anticlimactic. Do you remember the first baby? You get them undressed of their winter wear, fed, changed, and put them in their crib and then look at each other as if to say, 'now what?'. 

I was a c-section mom so I just wanted to sleep. But little Evie was not a section baby and mom had a pretty easy delivery so I can imagine what's going on over there. 

Back to quilting. I'll be working on the Tilda Girls all day. After work, I have to get onto DW to continue with Produce Section. It's hard going from a 49lb machine to a 69lb machine though. And, Bernie and DW track totally different. I usually piece something in between to get a break from one to the other which helps immensely. 

A New Retreat

I was in a couple of meetings yesterday. One was with my co-pilot on the retreat we are trying to springboard. The second was with the folks at Riverwalk Place to discuss and view the logistics of our pending retreat, and the third was here to discuss quilting on a HUGE Judy Niemeyer quilt due for the holiday. 

I only got a few hours of long arming in but will be finishing up the 'Tis the Season quilt today. Here's some of the quilting going into it...

This looks familiar

I made one of these myself a few years back and she wanted it quilted pretty much the same way I quilted mine, making things easier all around.

Meetings wear me out and at about 6:30 I was done long arming and moved over to do some paper piecing. That requires very little brain power or energy, so here is the next block in the Alaska quilt...

Alaskan Cache

I've gotta get the quilt on DW done in the next day or so. The large quilt just dropped off needs to be put onto DW just for throat space reasons. Meaning, I'll be moving over to that one next. 

Meetings and Such

I have a meeting this morning with Linda (Lakeview Quilting) and Selena (Riverwalk Place) to discuss the retreat we're trying to get together for early next spring. But that isn't until late morning. In the meantime, I'll be working on the top on Marty.

I also need to remove and reload Bernie. And maybe I'll sneak over to DW and do some work on that quilt. Time dependent. 

Here is the next block in the Alaska quilt top...

Can't even really see the error

I've been doing some cross stitching on Sundays to make some more ornaments for the tree that goes into the studio. I made these two yesterday...

I don't know if I like these two as much as I like the previous two I made...

Kind of small

My favorite thus far

This one is cute too

These are from different pattern writers, so that's the reason for the difference. I may have to search out some more patterns and see if I can come up with better ones.

Tilda in Tandem

Well, that'll probably happen today. The one on Marty has to "catch up" to the one on Bernie, but here's some of the quilting going in, not that this hasn't been seen before...

I'm not going to even comment because these are repeats of months past. After working until past 5:00 I jumped onto Mike to finish the binding on the Gravity quilt. It's all finished and folded and put away.

From there I got onto DW and did some stitching on my next wall hanging...

Leaving the paper piecing alone

I'm quilting around the paper pieced motifs because, honestly, they aren't that big and I'm putting a lot of thread around them.

Once I got the second row finished, I decided to work on my Tilda piece a bit on the sewing machine. Around 8:00 I started getting tired and my ear was starting to really bug me, so shut down for the night.

And my ear is still plugged this morning. I have a feeling I'm going back into the med center tomorrow to discuss this with them since my abx are only two more days worth. More on Marty and perhaps Bernie today working in the Tilda Samplers. 

A Variety

Yesterday was a variety of things in the studio. The first thing we needed before I could "play" was to grocery shop. That's kind of depressing. After getting back I cheered myself up by completing this...

Will not be making this again

The templates provided were not ample enough and I has some exceedingly frustrating moments building this block. It's going to end up being a wall hanging. I'll donate this pattern. 

I moved over to Foster after Jim got a call out for a 'smells gas'; he's on-call this weekend and all of next week. I have the first row half done, have taken a roll, and will work on that again this morning while Jim is canning salsa.

After working on Foster for a while, I dug around to find something new to work on. I did find a project I've put off for a while, but don't have the right color/amount of solids to complete it, so moved onto something else. 

I settled on this knowing I'm still trying to diminish my scrap stash. This should bust out a few...

I love house quilts!

When I refer to "The Village" for the next few weeks, this is what I'll be referring to. Each of these blocks measures 5 1/2" x 7"unfinished so I'm not going to tear through a large quantity of scraps, but a few. My rule is no large scrap pieces but all those small-ish ones floating around in the dresser that my fingers constantly push back down into the other bigger scraps. 

Yesterday Was A Mixture

Dealing with customers, loading quilts, frame ironing backs, cleaning machines and studios, and small projects made yesterday and nice mixture of quilting fun. About the only thing I did not do was actually quilt a quilt. I did baste in this one to be ready first thing tomorrow morning... 

Joans quilt ready for Monday

I wanted to make another cute pincushion for some new pins sent to me and I had started this late Friday night. Here's the finished project...

Selvedge Pin Cushion

That didn't take long and tried another small project I saw on IG. That's in the trash and we're just not going to talk about that wasted two hours of my life. Moving along. I have had a few projects given to me in pieces because the "giver" didn't want to deal with it any more. Here's the first one I finally finished...

Pretty table runner

Once I puzzled how to get this together, I looked through the pile and pulled out this...

Much smaller than you think

This is a Crabapple Hill project that is going to finish much small than I thought it would. But my friend/customer Diane did all the hand embroidery for me and I'm going to work the blocks today. Diane is the kind friend who is doing my Witches panels for me as well because she knows I can't/won't do hand embroidery. I love Diane!

Passwords

When you get a new phone, or device, or change something on your account, a password is usually required. I tried to change my email password last night and it kept telling me to choose something different because it was too close to previous passwords. How do you keep them all straight? Geesh!

Here's what I worked on this weekend...

Call Me Crazy Blocks 1 and 2

I'm going to do the main (focus) block in black and white and the remaining blocks in a different color way for each block. I'm planning on sashing these and there will be two borders around the whole thing, so I'm only going to need to make one (plus six more) of each block each week to get a 7 x 8 layout. 

I tidied up the studio yesterday and fiddled with our new Verizon account for a while but that's about all we did. Jim and I have been running pretty fast lately and we needed to movie-veg for a while. 

Forgot to Blog this Morning

Because we were off and running first thing. First stop, the UPS store to get Mary's quilt on its way. We were supposed to do that last night, but we ended up at the Verizon store for a new phone for Jim. That took WAY longer than we anticipated.

Second stop was to Pieces of Thyme for a Dream Bigger panel for a quilt my brother commissioned me to make/quilt for his "step-daughters" wedding this coming summer. Once we got home it was nearly lunch time and then Jim went into the bathroom upstairs to continue laying flooring. I started on my "Call Me Crazy" paper pieced blocks. Week two came through and I hadn't even started week one yet. 

Here's what's on DW today...

Jill's granddaughters birthday quilt

This will be getting an edge-to-edge on Monday. I'm going to drive. DW is acting odd and I'd be more comfortable doing the driving this time around until he goes down this spring for his spa day.

Here's what's on Bernie today...

Terry's Wall Hanging for her husband

I've already started on this one. Did all the ditching and started putting in the word/motorcycle detail. 

Before I can load a quilt (which I spent most of yesterday doing), these things need to be done to the machines:

Cleaning all the gunk off the trolley rails

Changing and aligning the needles

Cleaning the gunk off the rail wheels

And I also dust the machines and the long arm beds. I also vacuum under and around the floor of the machines. I feel like people often think you just throw the layers on the machine and then go. There's a lot more to quilting than just that...as you can see. 

Oh, and my long arm log is up to date. In 10 years I've quilted over three million square inches of quilts. 

Thunder Boomers

Just after waking this morning I heard thunder off in the distance. By 8:30 this morning it looked like it was 8:30 in the evening. Even the mercury and solar lights in the neighborhood were lit. Thankfully, it passed through rather quickly and now it's just really cloudy. Jim called and said there was a rainbow in the NW.

Huge rainbow

I don't long arm during thunder storms. I can't chance the machines getting hit. 

Here's what's on DW this morning...

We've seen one of these before haven't we?

This will be on the frame for the next four days, which is how long it takes me to do one of these Dream Bigger panels. 

The small piece on Bernie is still on Bernie. I've got it about half-way completed and am just putting swirls in there to get a feel for the buttons, machine weight, the performance, and how to handle rolling. 

Jim's been working on the new Elna location. He's modifying the HQ 210 Stitch table to accommodate the more robust machine for me. 

The new machines name will be Ellie

He worked until almost dark on this and said he still has some more stuff to do to on it . He's such a great husband!

One last pic of the quilt I took off yesterday. Eye Candy!

Web Site Down for a Day or Two

While Ueni is receiving the information from NameCheap (my DNS) and Vista Prints is releasing my site, we wait for a few days for the [new] site to come back up. 

Tomorrow is funeral day so no blogging. We'll be in Traverse City most of the day and have kids/grandkids coming up tonight and possibly tomorrow night. 

Here's what's on the frame today...

Ann V.'s third top. She calls it the "Deer from Hell". I have to concur

It's an absolutely beautiful piece to look at actually. She did not find it very fun to make. I'm not finding it easy to quilt. There are a LOT of multiple seam junctures that DW is going to have kittens over when I push him through. The background is getting a simple swirl to bring the deer forward, but the actual paper piecing section is getting random lines trying to avoid those bulky seams. Wish me luck.

I have two customers coming today at noon for a pick up (and possible drop off?). The guy four doors to the south is dumping a massive amount of large rocks over his very steep hill and the beep, beep trucks are in full swing as is the noise from the rock leaving the truck bed. Not a quiet day around here today. 

Another Finish

Linda's quilt is complete and Marcia's is on the frame this morning already basted in and started...

A Wine-y top

Marcia said to have fun with the threads, so I'm kind of doing that. After working on the frame for eight hours I moved to the beds. It's a top!

Snoozy beds

I may sneak this one onto the frame after Marcia's is complete just to get it basted in and ditched. Or...maybe I'll just do the whole thing on the frame. It's at the size almost too big to stick under the sit-down and I have kind of a time deadline with it. On to the next project. Yay! Don't ya love starting new projects?

Small Project Sunday

Elm Creek Greenhouse and Quilt Shop is open on Sunday. I have a new pattern I needed to get fabrics for and would have normally gotten them from Pieces. BUT...she doesn't carry flannels and this particular top is definitely going to need flannels. We started there yesterday morning and did a little shopping elsewhere in our travels.

Once we got lunch and watched a few movies, I moved into the studio to work on the beds. I had one to finish and another to start. But then I finished the last one and now have a complete set. 

Aren't these cute?

I have to run the sashing in between the columns, and then find a border fabric that will work. I'll dig around in my stash and see what I can find that may work. Otherwise, the Pieces Sidewalk Sale is coming up this weekend and I'm sure I'll be able to find something there. 

Meanwhile, Linda's quilt top is waiting for me to get started. It should be able to be finished today and I have one more in the time-is-of-the-essence situation sitting in the queue to load next. 

Interesting Response

While at the funeral yesterday, we hugged and offered our condolences and the family responded with, "Don't be sorry. She's wanted to go to the Lord for years now." The family seemed relatively relieved that Aunt Lil was now in Heaven with Jesus. 

Once we got home, it was still daylight out so I started in making another bed. On the previous night, I was able to get the border started on Linda's top...

Feathers

She basically planned out how she wanted this quilted, so I'm just having to do the actual work and not too much thinking. Which is good. With all the storms rolling through last night and again later today, my sinus headache is stronger than usual. 

Jim has tractor guys coming this morning and the girls arrived home all worn out from their stay at Luanns. Well, Hazel is tired. Lucy wants to play and Hazel is having none of it. I'll work most of what I can today but our neighbor, two doors down, is up right now, and you never know what that will bring. 

Funeral Attire

We have a funeral to attend tomorrow. Jim's Great Aunt Lil was 105 when she passed last week. We are heading north of Torch Lake first thing in the morning, but have to drop the dogs off first on our way. Meanwhile...I have nothing complete around here to wear. When was the last time I wore heels?

Getting back to quilting things. Evelyn picked up her t-shirt quilt already this morning and thank you for the WONDERFUL tip Evelyn! Tips are always appreciated and provide me with money for more fabric. 

Here's what's kind of on the frame this morning...

Linda's Top: Winter's Glow

I say it's kind of on the frame because I'm waiting for my wool batting delivery to arrive. It should be here around lunch. The piece of wool batt I currently have is 1" too short! UGH! Once it arrives, I'll start diving right in since this is another time sensitive project.

I started on another bed block last night once Linda's top was all marked and ready to get into. I'll continue with this after I dig through more closets to try and find a funeral outfit that will work.