Wide Feet

I'm on my feet. A lot. So finding comfortable shoes to accommodate my very (very) wide feet is tough. I do know that Keen brand shoes fit me the best. They have excellent support and exceptional comfort. The problem is, they are expensive. Having to choose here in my shoe selection is limited. Like to four pair limited.

For a woman to have four pairs of shoes is NOT cool. I do have other shoes. I have other options (like boots or sandals), but those are very limited as well. Honestly, if I went through my shoes and took out all the ones that are uncomfortable or don't fit any more, I'd have less than 12 pair. My DIL would be appalled. Andrew said she has over a 100 pairs of shoes to choose from. 

My husband has three pairs of shoes and two pairs of sandals and calls that extravagant. What my husband doesn't understand is that woman are NOT like that. We like variety and we like to feel good about ourselves. Ignoring that is mold in the cake; it doesn't taste good going down and will affect you later in the bathroom.  

Here's some of the quilting going into Ann's quilt on Bernie...

Just like Bernadettes

Changed up the grey border, but otherwise the same

And same here too

I got a So Fine! thread chart made up somewhere in all of yesterdays stuff and did my own inventory to see what I should not order when the vendors out there have July 4th sales.

I had a new customer come yesterday morning out of the blue who was referred to me. The customer visit yesterday afternoon was very long and while I had three quilts picked up, the intake for this week was four, so I'm still sitting on over 40 jobs.

Since the visit was later in the afternoon, and after the girls left, it was almost closing time. Jim and I headed north to the West Branch Meijer and did our shopping...and other stuff. 

I'll be working on DW today and at some point, need to make a little bag to hold the odds and ends my old purse held. They are currently in a plastic snack bag which is not cool. 

Skeptical

I was on the long arm by 8:30 yesterday morning. Getting up super early does that I guess. I'll be on it before 9:30 today. I worked on Ginny's Steam Punk quilt in the afternoon as well as some more quilting on Foster, but the bulk of yesterday morning and afternoon were spent working on Ginny's E2E piece on DW.

I drove...

I can drive faster than the computer 

I love to set DW at about 55% on manual mode and "skate" across the quilt. This big lady was done before a late lunch. 

While I was setting up to quilt this, of course, I had to pick top and bottom threads. I need to place a thread order because my bobbin threads are becoming very reduced in quantity. I didn't think I had enough  of the sterling color to get me through this piece and then I found these...

Prewound bobbins

These are SuperBOB's by Superior Threads and I had tried these once before in DW when I first purchased him. I didn't have a lick of luck back then, but I'm a little more seasoned now and feel like I could deal with adjusting tension to make them work. Everybody else in the industry is all a rage about prewounds and I really wanted to make them work. I had to. I didn't have enough of the Glide thread to get me through this quilt. These were a gift from a customer and I thought, 'what the heck?'.

OMG! I'm sold! I would have put four or five bobbins through this quilt if I would have wound them myself. I had a little under two bobbins into this quilt with the prewounds! According to Bob at Superior Threads, there is nearly four times more thread into these bobbins then there would be if I would have wound them myself. I don't think he's kidding!

I've tried the Magna Glide [prewound] bobbins in Bernie and they worked well in him also. I know the Berninas take a slightly different profiled bobbin, and it's recommended that if we do use prewounds to use the Magna Glides.

I wonder what a dozen of these price out at? Let me check. 

Okay, they run about a buck apiece (for either the Magna Glide or the SuperBOBs). When pricing them out they are nearly double what it would cost for me to wind my own bobbins. Dang it. I really like the convenience but for a business, I'll just have to suck it up and wind my own. Drats!

More work on Bernie with the Steam Punk quilt. I'm hoping to finish that one today but since it's a shop custom I'm going at it a little slow. 

Colds and Quilting

I'm at that point in my cold phase where the coughing starts in. Which is hard when trying to remain somewhat steady with your hand while quilting. Note to self: If the grandkids are sick, do not visit. 

Thread Sketching

Giving this huge panel some dimension was what I was going for. I'm not quilting this to death but instead, lightly thread sketching most of the major details in the watercolor print. The panel has a very nice hand to it and I don't want to add too much thread which would make it somewhat stiff. 

Hazel has decided she likes to hang out under the belly bar while I'm quilting now.

Hanging out with mom

I'm hoping to finish this piece today and deliver it and the previous one later this afternoon...or tomorrow morning. 

I started working on quadrant #3 on the Rail Fence top last night only to discover I can no longer count. Quadrants one and three should have been six by six blocks. I discovered quadrant three was only five by six after getting it on the design wall. Lesson learned; when coming down with a cold don't do anything mind blowing like counting.

I made six more new blocks, had to rearrange quadrant three and then pull out the top half of the piece to make sure I wasn't going to overlap colors. And since quadrant three was messed up I'll have to pay particularly close attention to the layout of number four later tonight. 

And apparently Superior Threads has finally gotten their #401 situation rectified because I received a notification my thread is on its way. A little too late, but better I get some more in the thread inventory since this one is used often in customer quilts. 

Thread and Bobbin Chicken

When working on a customer quilt, this is never a good thing.

Where's the thread?

And I still had one and a half passes to go. Start making calls. Bribe people. Plead with suppliers. And then when that fails, call the customer after finding a color that is nearly exact from your thread stash. 

Apparently So Fine! #401 is a rare commodity. After spending a good amount of time on the phone with folks found that it's been an issue since last June or July. People are switching to different thread suppliers because of the situation. 

But it's rectified. Moving along. This is on the frame this morning.

Customer said to make this panel not look like a panel

I actually started it yesterday afternoon because I was excited to make the panel not look like one. A lot of ruler work and close quilting is happening to make the challenge happen. 

Quadrant #1 is complete on the rail fence top, and because I still wasn't feeling all that great (thank you Elijah), I knocked off before 8:00 last night. 

More of the same today with the exception of customers coming later this afternoon to pick up completed quilts. 

Happy Valentines Day

A day for love. A day to tell those special someones how much you think of them. A day to do and be wherever it is you love to do or be.

I'm fortunate to be living the dream every day. And today will be spent in the studio overlooking our frozen lake, with the fresh snow on the ground and viewing the beauty surrounding three walls through the windows.

Here's one of the projects on todays list.

This is done so beautifully

This is the appliqué piece I mentioned yesterday. I only have the red feathers yet to do, but all those starts and stops.

I have to get the binding on the Little Buckaroo quilt and maybe the thread will be here for the giant top shown in yesterdays post.

I have the correct color of thread for the bobbin. But it's an Omni thread. Omni (by Superior Threads) is a 40 weight thread and I would be winding bobbins every 20 minutes. Who wants to do that?

The thread I did order is a 60 weight Glide thread (through Kingsmen Supply) and should be here later today. But in the meantime, I've got plenty to do until it arrives.

Yeah Superior!

Superior threads are primarily used in the studio. I piece (currently) with Aurafil, but am going to switch to superior So Fine! for piecing too once the Aurafil is depleted. Why? Cost. Why? Service. Why? Value.

When you have a small business, all factors mentioned above need to be taken into consideration. I've pieced with the So Fine! in the past and quite frankly, it does as well as the Aurafil, and per yard, the cost is ridiculously lower than Aurafil.

As you can tell, my thread arrived yesterday in the mail. Even off the spool (they were currently out of cones) the thread behaved well and I was able to FINALLY get the Tula quilt finished and off the frame.

On to the t-shirt quilt today.

Loaded and ready to go

I loaded it last night and am ready to rock n' roll today.

After loading the top and getting ready to go first thing this morning (changing needles, clean machine, winding bobbins, picking thread colors), I worked on my new little wall hanging project. Here's the first of four ladies.

The Fabric Stasher

Isn't she funny? The other three are just as cute, but this was the hardest of the four, and the directions said to tackle her first, so I did. It needs to be blanket stitched down yet, but despite what the directions say, I'm not going to do that until all four of them are onto the fabric.

And, I'm actually not going to blanket stitch them (I don't think). I'm thinking I'm going to do what I did on my Seasonal Silhouettes quilt and just free motion straight stitch everything down. It's a wall hanging. It's not going get much washing done to it. I can change out the thread colors easier (the pattern said to use just one color of thread when blanket stitching) and it sounds like more fun.

It's a crappy weather day so let's crank up the tunes and put some thread in the cotton.