On Machine Quilting, Old Red Barns, Old Houses and Sunrises

Yep, that was a mouthful and a handful of work!

Remember my machine quilting table for my frames that Danny made me? They ended up in my bedroom as a storage rack for clothes and junk for a long time now?

Well the reason behind that was we had a glitch in them and all we ever did about that glitch was to discuss that one of these days we would do something about that glitch.

Last Sunday was that day!

I just had an epiphany of sorts and decided that I knew exactly what would work on that glitch and that I was way past ready to have these frames up and running and OUT of my bedroom.

So off we trek to Lowes and spend $8 on the glitch parts and then just simply move them........simple? ha! Simple in the fact that we just dropped everything that was on them and moved them!

I moved them to another temporary home in the side of my hair studio........ I know you are thinking that I am crazy but it works for now. Climate controlled and the lighting is superb!

Cramped yes, but right now is a really slow season for the business and I went for it and carved out an area and this building seems to have been built to be a quilting studio! LOL It's been everything, a greenhouse, a hot tub room, a hair salon and now a quilting studio! That's what you call getting your money's worth!!

This Fence Rail Quilt was started way back when he first built the tables so I could have a quilt ready in a flash to practice quilting with my new Juki and the frames at the same time.

Now after all this time, I have become really acquainted with the Juki TL98Q and love her! So when I put her in the frames this time I was very comfortable and I quilted this quilt in no time flat. I was so proud! I now have all the parts to the Juki HZL600 and she is wonderful too!

I have started a king size modern strip quilt in polka dots....giggle giggle... for my bed and the machine is awesome. I have another quilt in the frames now which is a made up pattern that I threw together one day and it turned out a bit wonky but not wonky on purpose.....get my drift? So I am practicing with a new pantograph on it and it's going quite well so far, seems there are some booboo's that you can quilt out!

I also have several quilts on their way here to "quilt for hire"!!!!!!!!!!!

That's always been my goal but it's been a glitch part away for a long time!

I have been spending a lot of time shooting the beautiful sunrises.

Yesterday morning instead of running outside in my PJ's to catch it, I got some clothes on and ran down the road about a mile and parked in front of this old farm..............well, the sunrise was pretty but the farm was prettier! This is owned by Danny's boss. I LOVE IT!







A bit of playing around with the editing!

With my macro lens.

heart

Have I ever told you that I love red barns?

Well I do!

This is the sunrise that got me started on my chase.......1/4/2012

Totally unedited!

This one made it to our local TV news channel for their evening weather!

I didn't know it but one of my neighbor/hair clients told me.

He works on this farm that is thru that gate and he said he knew where this was taken immediately!

1/14/2012

A Saturday morning and Danny was leaving to go cut firewood. As he left i was standing in the road in my PJ's and it was 14 degrees or so, as I started to shoot I noticed an orange line coming up horizontally and then in a few moments a vertical orange line crossing it. It kept getting bigger and bigger and I kept shooting............you should see all my pics in the timeline..........and suddenly there was a gorgeous orange cross in the sky overlooking my little town, my little farm and me!! Danny tried to call back to tell me to shoot it if I hadn't seen it. Morgan thought I edited it in my pics.........Oh no, there's only one person who could do that and we all know who HE is!

I felt so blessed and privileged to be able be standing here that beautiful morning!

1/25/2012

1/25/2012

1/25/2012

Yet another one made it on the evening news!

Of course I posted them on their Facebook page but they picked mine twice!!!!!!

This was yesterday, beautiful but not as breathtaking as the previous days!

My Quilting Frame......

Here it is!! Yay!!

He is finished with constructing it but we now have to get it into the house.

They are 12' long and are built in 2 pieces...pretty smart huh?

At least we can move them in sections.

How about that great storage shelf he added underneath??

They are soooo loooooonnnngggggggg!

The tracks are one continuous board so as not to have any bumps while moving the machine along the tracks. They will be screwed in place once we set everything up exactly where I want it.

We used most of the Handi Quilter frame that I already had.

These end pieces will be adjustable with some bolts with wing nuts.

I will be able to quilt up to a king size quilt on them.

All I have to do is sand them down really good and then get them put up tomorrow evening.

I can't wait to actually use them!!

He did such a good job!!!!

This made me feel goooooood.......

see this computer screen and all these buttons?

quilting in progress....


moving right along....
rather nice stitches.......

pretty even stitches......right?.........

and just as pretty on the back!!

Well girls there is a story behind this post..............

Where do I begin? OK....remember I drove all the way across the state to get this machine that I thought was such a good bargain, that I found on Craigslist?

I played with it at the ladies home that I bought it from and when I got her home she sewed beautifully!! I was so looking forward to getting a quilt ready for my frames and give her a try in there. So several weeks ago I slapped a layer cake (40 ~ 10" squares of fabrics)
together that I have had for a while. I am using a thrift store sheet that has some special detail that you can't see in the pictures yet, for the backing. I wrestled with my frames and getting this quilt in the frames for almost half a day that day.

I was so excited to see how my baby would do. She has a longer arm than my other machines but she is still not a long arm. I was hoping the difference in the length would be tolerable and make the job a little easier on me.

I played with the machine on the table first, wound all my bobbins and stippled on some scraps and it was just lovely.

When I got her in the frames it was "Katie Bar The Door" all you know what broke loose in my sewing room!!!! Not kidding! Everything that could go wrong went wrong with this machine.

The needle just fell out! I broke needles, I broke threads, The stitching was absolutely horrible.

I took the machine out of the frames and worked with her for at least 3 hours that afternoon and I couldn't get her to hardly sew a stitch. Robin was sitting beside me with the manual and we tried everything in our power to get her sewing. Nothing worked.

So I just got up and walked away from the sewing room and I have not been back until today.

I told no one except for Terri of this ordeal because it was too painful to talk about.

I was ready to give up quilting and throw everything out the window into the fish pond.

I left it all out of sight and out of mind for all these weeks now.

When I went up there today......I didn't feel like doing much of anything, so I thought I would just sit down and see if I could make her sew one final time.

It worked!!

It was sewing beautifully again in no time.

I said a big prayer asking the Lord for patience as I put her back in the frame to not lose my temper and shoot her.

God is good!!

I have over half of the quilt finished and I am so pleased with the results!

Apparently I did not know how to change the thread tension and save it in the computer. For some reason it just fell into place today. I did not even pick up the manual either!

Maybe I can think clearer with a foggy stuffy brain???

So I am not ready to throw her in the pond yet. Danny was happy and came upstairs and watched me quilt for a while and told me several things he can do to the frames to make them a litlle easier for me to work with....woowooooo!!!!!! Now just getting him to do that!!!!

Yes this really made me forget for a while that I was so sick.....then the Excedrin wore off again!!!! I am going to finish this quilt, that is just for me...maybe for the midnight boatrides that we have every now and again. Then I have to get to work on some other UFO's and some new projects that I have in mind....like a log cabin quilt like Terri's!!!

Move over Martha!!

Becky is on the warpath now!

In her new semi-organized sewing studio.

Oh boy oh boy have I been at it today. I was so tired of having a sewing machine here and an ironing board there. Here a cutting board and there a cutting board.....and everywhere in my house a sewing mess.

How was a girl to get anything done?

So I went to town on this room upstairs which was my original sewing room.

I have had a dilema with my quilting frames......I did not have room to put them up and extend them to fit a king sized quilt. Or hardly room to even use them for a lap quilt either. Danny has been begging me to make one for our bed. He made me a bed when we first got married....full size though. He says if he could build a bed at least I could make a quilt for it!! Does he really know what's involved with that one? LOL!!!
In the picture above there are 2 big Rubbermaid tables sitting end to end which can be used for the frames as big as I need them to be!!! woooowooooo!!!!! Finally figured that one out!

Until I get that said king size quilt made and ready for the frames one of the tables will be used as a cutting table. It is up on blocks to save my back!

My Christmas present last year was a whole bunch of new receptacles in my sewing room and peg board!!
This sewing cabinet was a consignment store treat at $44 last year!!!!!!! I love it!!

You see what kept me going today....Dr Pepper and my MP3!!!

I may be sewing all night!!

I am still a little bit crowded but it seems to be pretty functional at the same time.

One of the best things I have ever done was to buy that big display of Gutermann thread. I got it 1/2 price at Joann Fabrics (I think it was $89) a couple years ago and it has really come in handy. I don't remember ever being out of thread unless it was quilting thread since I bought this.

I can sit in the one rolling chair and scoot around to the 3 different machines as I need to.




Semi-organized shelves for storage. I have lots of containers that have been repurposed for storage of sewing notions. My bolts of fabric fit on the bottom shelf nicely. The tan cabinet is chock full of fabric. No it's not sorted by colors and perfectly folded so
I did not take pictures of that ;-)
I wish!!

Lots of good work surface until it gets junky!!

I love having a big cutting table!

When I need to extend the frames I can move some of this over or out for a while.

My next project!

Another quick charm quilt by Moda!

I love me some Moda fabrics!

I hope you enjoyed the tour of my sewing studio!

At the top of my want/need list......

is this.........

an American made long arm quilting machine. I want it really bad! Yes really really really bad. I am taking donations now!! Please send money to...

Becky is Poor
care of Danny is Tight @ Sunny Morning Farm, Va

Thank you!!

Handi Quilter.....

It may not be so handi after all. I wrestled with this thing on Thursday and got it put up and my older Kenmore machine put in it, you know the machine with out all the new features that my newer one has. I thought it would be OK for quilting because it does a beautiful stitch and I don't have to wrestle with the quilt so I didn't need the needle down feature. I knew that I would have better control of the machine so I didn't need the speed limit feature either.

WRONG!!!! I practiced for a long time on a muslin. I broke needles. My presser foot fell off one time. I made a complete mess.
Today I decided that since I was doing nothing else besides blogging about my old blogs and telling the world how crazy I am that I would go ahead and put a real quilt in there. A real small quilt. Another Moda Charm quilt from Mary Engelbriet designs. I thought that if it was a real project that I would take my time and be more careful and gain some control of this baby. I put the new Kenmore in there and it has been great. I have learned alot from putting the quilt in the frames to controlling my machine and so on and so forth. Nothing like hands on is it?

My stitches have touched in places and made love in places but not many. I am learning! I am getting a feel for how much room I have before moving the machine. I see a longarm machine in my future! The wrinkle in the fabric is only there because I was stopped and had the needle down so as not to lose my place and the machine pulled against the quilt causing a wrinkle. The frames really do keep the fabric taut!!

Not bad for a beginner huh?

I thought this thing was gonna kick my butt. I think I have it whipped now. I better learn something soon because I have a much larger pinwheel quilt almost ready for quilting. See I can finish some projects....if I want to!!!

Look at those really cool blocks of wood (top pic) with holes drilled in them, so the table wouldn't slip off, to raise my cutting table/quilting up high enough that it won't break my back. I have asked for them for years and finally got them Thursday evening after I put the quilt frames together all by myself and didn't bother him ;-)