Sharon Is Learning Long Arm Quilting

Last week was Sharon and Jayne week, I do believe. We sewed together as we generally do every week - that was Tuesday. On Wednesday, we met for lunch and a little downtown window shopping in Chillicothe. She treated! Then on Thursday, she was back over here to put a quilt on the long arm machine and get one of her many quilts finished off.

And, let me tell you, that was a day filled with trials and tribulations. That machine had been sewing fine just 3 or 4 days earlier, it had been cleaned, oiled, and given a new needle. But doggone, we could not figure out why that upper thread broke time after time after time. It was totally frustrating. We did eventually get it finished, and to our best guess, the guide post located just above the cone of upper thread was positioned incorrectly. I do not recall this being moved, but perhaps inadvertently it had, and the machine was not a bit happy about it.

Sharon's quilt is made with Thimbleberries' fabrics, and is from one of Lynette Jensen's Thimbleberries' books, North Bay Quilts; the quilt is called Cross Patch, and Sharon's looks pretty much identical to the one in the book.

Because we were having so much difficulty with the machine early on, Sharon adjusted her quilting plan to a very gently wavy line across the quilt. Making lemonade out of lemons, in other words. I love how it looks like drifting snow, and is perfect on this wintry quilt.

The backing is checkered burgundy and cream which also fits perfectly for the quilt. She really did hit a home run with how it all came together. Come December when she pulls this quilt out for the holidays, she will be so thrilled to have finished it. 

We plan to sew together tomorrow for regular machine piecing; this is our norm - once a week, usually on Tuesdays. It's a good way to stay caught up with each other, and we definitely make sewing and quilting a priority this way, too!

I'll sign off with a couple more random shots of Sharon's Cross Patch quilt.

I hope you are having a most wonderful Monday! We have a gorgeous, warm day here in southern Ohio. I've got a few windows open, and it is good for one's soul to hear the birds chirping and some distant pounding of nearby woodpeckers. Ahhh, spring!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

 
 

Happy Accidents

I've stored up a lot of memories from my years as a high school English teacher. One popped into my head just as I wrote that title - Happy Accidents. A literary term, oxymoron, is defined as an expression that joins two opposite things to make a point. To make it easy for students to understand, I would use "happy accident" and 'jumbo shrimp" as examples. There is an entire soliloquy of these in Romeo and Juliet that with the deeper application, is called paradox, yet another literary term.

But we aren't here to re-live my years as an English teacher. We are here to talk all things quilt-related. And that takes me to my happy accident.

Yesterday while Sharon was here to sew, I was cutting out a project (machine is still in the shop). And you know how conversations go, weaving from one subject to another with no particular direction in mind. Just conversing the way friends do. Well somewhere along the line, something led me to pull out a Thimbleberries book, which led to Sharon saying that this one particular quilt is one she has always planned to make. That led me to taking a closer look and considering it for one of the unnamed quilts on my 2013 goals list, which led me to go to the closet to drag out the tub with the yellow-blue-gray fabrics I'd pulled. (Are you with me??)

 In that tub was this fat quarter bundle from a couple of years ago. It's all blues from Jo Morton and Andover Fabrics.

Get ready for the happy accident here...As I turned the bundle over and studied all the pieces, look at what jumped out at me!!

This is the fabric I was desperate for late last year. Click here to read all about it. It is technically black, but it has such an interesting hue to it that it works just fine in that navy/indigo blue FQ pack.

I was elated!! *happy dance*

(Happy dances are much easier to do now that my sciatic pain is 95% eliminated.) *more happy dancing*

With this FQ pack and a yard of a really pretty yellow, I think I might have a quilt decision made. And with this "happy accident" I now can more easily look for additional yardage of this wonderful black.

I just had a call from Kelly at the quilt shop who has been trying to fix my Bernina. It looks like my old girl is going to have to take a little trip to the factory. The feed dog troubles are a bit more involved than Kelly has been trained for (my machine is quite old; Kelly's training has been on the newer models.)

I am going to get a lot of projects cut out for the eventual return of Miss Bernina, aren't I?

Hmmm...Could this, then, be another Happy Accident??

Happy Quilting, Friends!